In The Footsteps of Lincoln

IN THE FOOTSTEPS
OF THE LINCOLNS

FIREPLACE IN HISTORICAL MusF.UM OF HINGHAM, MAss., FIRST AMERICAN 1-IoM OF THE LlNCOLNS. THF. LINCOLNS LANDED ABOUT 16
37
By such a fireplace seven successive generations of Lincolns plied their industrie8, read their books, and knelt in prayer
N THE FOOTSTEPS
OF THE LINCOLNS
By
I D A M. T A R B E L L
AUTHOR OF "HE KNEW LINCOLN," "LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINOOLN,"
"IN LINCOLN'S CHAIR"
Illustrated
PUBLISHERS
H.ARPER & BROTHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMXXIV
IN THE FOOTSTEPS
OF THE LINCOLNS
Copyright, 1924
By Harper & Brothers
Printed in the U. S. A.
First Edition
III-X
CONTENTS
CHAPTJt I'AGB
PREFACE
ix
I. THE FIRST LINCOLN IN AMERICA 1
II. MoRDECAI LINCOLN, IRoN MASTER
17
III. THE CALL OF NEW JERSEY
30
IV. "VIRGINIA JOHN"
42
v. THE CALL OF KENTUCKY
53
VI. THE yOUTH OF THOMAS LINCOLN 66
VII. THE MoTHER oF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
78
VIII. ABRAHAM LINCOLN's BIRTHPLACE
90
IX. THE FIRST HoME LINCOLN REMEMBERED 101
X. ToM LINCOLN SEEKS FREE SoiL
114
XI. LINCOLN LEARNS FROM LABOR 128
XII. LINCOLN's INTELLECTUAL AwAKENING
139
XIII. STARTING OuT FOR HIMSELF
154
XIV. NEW SALEM ADOPTS LINCOLN 16g
XV. FEELING His WAY
183
XVI. SuRVEYOR, LEGISLATOR, LAw STUDENT
197
XVII. ANN RuTLEDGE 211
XVIII. 1837-LINCOLN's FIRST BIG YEAR
225
XIX. THE MARRIAGE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND MARY
ToDD
236
XX. LINCOLN SETTLES DowN
250
XXI. LINCOLN THE PoLITICIAN
264
XXII. THE FIRST TERM IN CoNGREss
278
[v]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER l'AGB
XXIII. LINCOLN RETURNs To THE LAw . 292
XXIV. ON THE CIRCUIT .
305
XXV. LINCOLN BoLTS His PARTY 321
XXVI. EDUCATING ILLINOIS 341
XXVII. A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT
354
XXVIII. THE CouNTRY WANTS TO SEE LINCOLN
369
XXIX. IN THE HANDS OF HIS FRIENDS g82
XXX. AWAITING THE VERDICT
398
INDEX .
415
[vi]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Fireplace in Historical Museum of Hingham, Mass. . Frontispiece
Opening Entry of the Diary of Rev. Peter Hobart . Facing p. 14
Record of Samuel Lincoln's Death in Daniel Cushing's Account
Book . . Facing p. 14
"Old Ship Church" of Hingham, Mass.
" 14
House Built in Scituate, Mass., Early in the 18th Century by
Lincoln, Son of Samuel Lincoln . Facing p. 24
Restored Tap Room of the Old Ordinary-Now the Historical
Museum-of Hingham, Mass. . p. 24
House Built in 1733 in Berks Co., Pa., by Mordecai Lincoln,
Great-Great-Grandfather of Abraham Lincoln . Facing p. 38
Headstone of Grave in Covell's Hill Cemetery, Monmouth
Co., N. J. Facing p. 38
Facsimile of Signature of Mordecai Lincoln, Sr. . 38
Portraits of Abraham Lincoln and His Second Cousin, David Lin-
coln, Showing Striking Resemblance in Features Facing p. 52
House Built in 1800 by Jacob Lincoln, Great-uncle of Abraham
Lincoln . Facing p. 52
Memorial at Lincoln's Birthplace Near Hogdensville, Ky. .
Facing p. g6
Fragments from the Daybook of James Renshaw Page 161
Facsimile of Tavern License Taken Out in March, 1833, by
Berry and Lincoln . Page 191
Facsimile of Map and Report of a Survey Made by Abraham
Lincoln in 1834 Page 1g8
[vii]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Facsimile of Letter Written by Abraham Lincoln, Postmaster
of New Salem, Illinois Page 203
Grave of Ann Rutledge in Oakland Cemetery, Petersburg,
Illinois . Facing p. 222
Abraham First Professional Card Page 223
Facsimile of an Invitation to a Springfield Cotillon Party of
Which Abraham Lincoln Was One of the Managers Page 242
Facsimile of Marriage License of Abraham Lincoln and Mary
Todd Page 249
Facsimile of Brief in Lincoln's Handwriting .
The Eighth Judicial Circuit Which Lincoln Traveled
Facsimile of Foreword Written by Lincoln in a Campaign Book
Page 361
Announcement of the Seventh and Last of the Lincoln and
Douglas Debates Page 366
First Announcement of Lincoln as President .
Facsimile of a Definition of Democracy Written and Signed by
Lincoln Page 400
Portrait of Lincoln Made Just Before He Left Springfield for
His Inauguration as President . Facing p. 4o6
[viii]
PREFACE
This book reports a pilgrimage undertaken to refresh and
enlarge the author's previous studies of the life of Abraham
Lincoln. The pilgrimage began in Hingham, Massachusetts,
where two hundred eighty-six years ago the first of the family
line, Samuel Lincoln, a boy of seventeen, came as a pioneer;
it passed from there to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the Shen-
andoah Valley of Virginia, into Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois.
I found it an inspiring thing to trace the roads these seven
successive generations of Lincoln pioneers to look
upon the remains of their homes, reconstruct from documents
and legends their activities, judge what manner of men and
women they were, the place they held among their fellows.
In these wanderings the whole history of the United States
seemed to unroll before me. In this Lincoln migration we
have the family history of millions of our contemporaries.
And this story of their vigorous, independent pioneering,
their passion for self-help and self-rule, goes far to account
for Abraham Lincoln. He was not an accident. These Lin-
coins were behind him, preparing for the miracle.
Not only has this pilgrimage given me at least a partial
explanation of Abraham Lincoln, it has broken down more
than one accepted tradition of his youth and his immediate
forebears. There is the old notion that Thomas Lincoln, his
father, was a shiftless vagrant, poor in mind and spirit.
There is abundant evidence to show the tradition a libel.
Thomas Lincoln was the child of an advancing pioneer army.
[ix]
PREFACE
His father fell in that advance, shot by Indians. The boy,
orphaned, made himself a place in a new country, acquired
land, became a good craftsman, held various local offices,
was a trustee of his church-its moderator and committeeman
again and again-a trusted, respected man. In the end he
fell a victim to disease-attacked at fifty, he never rallied.
We do not despise the soldier who in a front line of battle
is wounded, gassed, shocked beyond action. We pity and
honor him. Lincoln was a pioneer soldier, a victim
of the conditions under which the advance was made.
Again there is the tradition that Abraham Lincoln's child-
hood and youth were passed in hopeless and poverty
and hardship. There were poverty and hardship, but they
were never hopeless, therefore never sordid. They were re-
garded as a necessary stage in the great undertaking of open-
ing, taming, and developing a new land. These men knew
what they sought. To treat them as vagrants is to fail to
understand the spirit of the pioneer. Abraham Lincoln's
youth was passed in one of the most daring and promising
struggles to which American men have ever put their hands.
He weathered it, expanded under it, saw the meaning of it
-and flung himself into the struggle to realize literally the
great creed of Liberty for which his forebears had made their
sacrifices.
As the attempt to trace the footsteps of these forebears
has broken down for me the "poor white" tradition, so the
attempt to 'follow anew Lincoln's footsteps through his Illi-
nois life has intensified my feeling that his rise to power was
one of the most logical in our history. It was the natural
triumph of an active, ambitious imagination, of a stern purpose
to develop both mind and character and to drive them in the
[x]
PREFACE
same harness, of a passion for fair play and free opportunity.
Great mental and moral qualities, rigorously trained and kept
steadily at work, brought Abraham Lincoln naturally into the
Presidency of the United States, where this book leaves him.
I. M. T.
[xi]
IN THE FOOTSTEPS
OF THE LINCOLNS
LINCOLN
In him distilled and potent the choice essence of a race!
Far bad the Puritans-stern and manful visionaries,
Repressed poets, flushed with dreams of glowing theologies!
Each new succession, out of border hardship,
Refined to human use the initial rigor of the breed,
Passing to the next the unconscious possession of a perfecting soul/
Each forest clearing gave something of neighborly grace,
The rude play of cabin-bred natural people something of humor,
Each mountain home something of inner daring,
Each long-wandering life something of patience and of hope!
In the far-seen nature gradually diseled
The deepening wistful eyes.
Each a:ttman and each plowman added
Another filament of ruggedness;
Unknowing minds dumbly cried for liberty;
Mute hearts strove against injustice. o o o
At last was ready the alembic, where Nature stored and set aPtfrt
Each generation's finest residue,
Wailing for the hour of perfect
AnJ then the Miracle/
Igo8
JOHN S. PHILLIPS.
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF
THE LINCOLNS
I
THE FIRST LINCOLNS IN AMERICA
T
HE story of Abraham Lincoln begins in Hingham,
Massachusetts, in the year 163 7, when the first of his
family line came to the Puritan colony of Boston Bay. This
was his great-great-great-great-grandfather, Samuel by name,
a boy of but seventeen or eighteen at the time-such a boy
as we would send to high school or college in these days.
Young as Samuel Lincoln was, he was not without some
experience of life. He had sat on a backless bench in a seven-
teenth-century schoolroom in Hingham, England, and received
his share of its narrow but thorough teaching. And, because
he was to earn his living, and weaving was the natural trade
for a boy in Norfolk County, England, at that time, he had
been apprenticed-apprenticed to a man by the name of
Francis Lawes, living in Norwich, not many miles from
Hingham.
When you were apprenticed in those days, you left your
family and became a member of your master's family. You
had more to do than to learn to weave. In fact, you were
what was called an indentured servant. Mr. Lawes was under
contract to teach Samuel the trade and to give him his keep
and a small-probably a very small-weekly or monthly
sum. Samuel in turn was obliged to obey Mr. Lawes, and
[1]
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE LINCOLNS
that meant not only that he must learn to weave, but he
must wait on the family. If the family was ungenerous and
domineering, it is easy to see that the apprentices had a bad
time. Indeed, they had so bad a time that only a few years
after Samuel left England there was what was called the
"Apprentices' Revolt"-strike, we should probably say
to-day. It produced the state of things which led Daniel
Defoe to complain that while once apprentices cleaned their
masters' shoes and brought in water and waited at the table,
now their masters were obliged to keep porters, or "fetch
men," as he calls them, to wait upon the apprentices.
Samuel did not profit by the apprentices' strike, for, in
1637, Francis Lawes decided to go to America and to take
him along. It was in April that they "passed into foreign
parts," as the record has it-a long voyage, over two months
-and in June arrived in Salem, Massachusetts. Samuel did
not stay in Salem. Before many weeks he took ship for a
town twenty miles or thereabouts to the south, called Hing-
ham, or New Hingham, after his old home in Norfolk County,
England.
I say "took ship," and that is sure, for in those days he
could not have gone overland. Safe trails had not yet been
established, and there was no way to cross so wide a river as
the Charles; but of fishing and trading boats there were
already not a few plying along the coast. And it was in
one of those that Samuel sailed out one day from Salem.
What a sail-that from Salem into Hingham Bay-to
take before man had slashed the great timber that came down
to the very water's edge of many a promontory and island,
before he had seized the rocks and bluffs of Boston Harbor
for his lights and marks, his guns and forts, his factories
and chimneys !
The bay into which Samuel came is one of rare interest
[2] I
and beauty. You make it coming from the north by turning
around the tip of that curved finger of land we know as
Hull. Across its water to the south lies a cove, Bare Cove,
the first settlers called it, and it was into this that the vessel
on which Samuel was a passenger made its way.
Bare Cove ran up between two high bluffs in those days,
a snug .and sheltered water where now are asphalted streets,
railroad tracks, rows of houses and shops. Indeed, one of the
most puzzling things for a sightseer in Hingham to-day is to
read on a tablet, high and dry, above a street along which
automobiles run, and a block and more away from the present
wharf, the fact that Peter Hobart, about whom we are to
hear later, debarked on that spot in September, 1635.
Samuel hardly stopped, however, to look about him in his
first moment. It had been months now since he left Old
Hingham, and in that time he had seen few old friends;
but here, awaiting him on the wharf, were many, among them.
two of his brothers, Thomas, the oldest of the family, a
. weaver, his brother Daniel, only two or three years older
than himself, and with them a cousin, Nicholas Jacob. All
three of these men had been in Massachusetts nearly four
years, and already were householders and landholders in
New Hingham.
Why were they here-these brothers of his-this cousin'?
Why was this tiny New Hingham made up of people from
Old Hingham'? We have been taught to say that it was
because they sought a place in which they could worship God
according to the dictates of their own consciences. It is an
incomplete explanation.
True, these people that Samuel had joined and their for-
bears for generations had been struggling in England to
escape the tyranny of priests and prelates, to secure the right
to own and read the Bible, to interpret it in their own way,
[3] .
to make and say their own prayers, and to do away with the
complicated ceremonial that, in their judgment, the Church
had substituted for righteousness of heart.
They had been struggling, too, for a government in which
they could have a full representation, for the right to run
their own local affairs, to hold meetings, improve their schools,
own their land. Their struggle had had its ups and downs,
and from the point of view of many of them was at this
time almost hopeless. When Samuel left England it had
been eight years since there had been a meeting of Parliament,
Charles I having shut the doors on its members in 1629.
All these things go into the explanation of their migration,
and it was these things, fought over year after year, that had
broken down old institutions, destroyed industries, driven out
much of the skilled management that heretofore had directed
affairs, until finally the agricultural and industrial machine,
particularly of the eastern part of England, had been thrown
into such confusion that self-support was almost impossible.
The group that Samuel joined in New Hingham left Old
Hingham largely because they were no longer able to earn a
decent living there.
But there was much more with Samuel, and probably most
of the young. There was adventure. What more royal
adventure has the world ever offered than this of crossing
a mysterious ocean to a continent only a fragment of whose
shore line had been charted-a continent inhabited by a
strange people--a continent where, so it was believed, there
was fabulous wealth for the
At the time of Samuel's coming the Hingham "Planta-
tion," as the settlements were called, numbered perhaps fifty
people--there were only about in all the New England
colonies. Every month this number increased, and what was
of interest to Samuel was that he knew so many of the people
[4]
that came. Most important of all these early arrivals was
that of Robert Peck, the minister who is to have bap-
tized him in 1622 in England, and to have brought him up in
the strictest Puritan way. Robert Peck had been one of the
most uncompromising of his faith-one who could be counted
on boldly to disobey any order of a bishop of which he did not
approve. He would not preach in a surplice. He would
not read the "Book of Sports" which the Church authorities
thought would be good for the Puritans-a seventeenth-
century attempt to introduce the continental Sunday into
England. Particularly he would not consent that the com-
munion table be removed from the nave of the church, where
everybody could reach it, to its former place of honor at the
end of the chancel. And when, in 1634, . the archbishop
thought himself strong enough politically and ecclesiastically
to force the table back into its old place, and the order was
carried out in the Old Hingham church, Robert Peck rose in
holy indignation and called his parishioners together. There
is little doubt that Samuel was in the group, or on its out-
skirts, that dragged the altar from its new place, stripped it
of its gilding and candles, and actually lowered the floor of
the chancel several inches below that of the nave.
Robert Peck had to pay the price of his continued revolt-
ing. He was stripped of his
There was nothing for him to do, so he thought, but to follow
the Puritans to the New World.
And this he did in 1638, landing only a few months after
Samuel.
His going was a dreadful loss to Old Hingham. But what
was a tragedy to Old Hingham was a blessing to New, for
Robert Peck became their first teacher, and to see him going
in and out among the little houses of New Hingham must
have done much to make life more natural for young Samuel.
[5]
Another early arrival that meant much to him was that
of Daniel Cushing, 1 a young man near his own age, with
whom he had no doubt gone to school and to church and
played whatever proper games Robert Peck had tolerated in
Old Hingham. He was a young man of ambition and energy
-a very human person, too. He ran a general store, became
town clerk, grew prosperous and influential in New Hingham.
The most satisfactory record of what went on in the town
that we have is Daniel Cushing's account book, in 'which he
not only set down his daily transactions, but many of the
doings of his neighbors-the time that Israel Leavett abused
Mr. Norton and his wife with "base speeches"; the time his
boy got drunk at Enoch Hobart's; the case set down in a
numerical alphabet he sometimes used of a hasty marriage, a
premature birth, the kind of thing that proves to us that
the Puritans, witli all their severity, never succeeded in
. suppressing drunkenness or immorality-makes us suspicious,
indeed, that their very severity may have stimulated what
they sought to root out.
It humanizes one's ideas of Hingham no little to know
that there were men of Daniel Cushing's journalistic bent in
the community. Samuel Lincoln and he must have talked
over things in the town many a day, much in the fashion,
I fancy, that a couple of hundred years later, a great-great
great-great-grandson of Samuel's was to gossip and discuss in
a country store of southwestern Indiana, a country store over
which he presided in New Salem, Illinois, and, later still, in a
drug store on the square in Springfield, Illinois. Daniel
Cushing was just about the same kind of a man to talk with
that Abraham Lincoln found in all of these towns.
When Samuel Lincoln arrived in Hingham it was little
more than a collection of log houses, strung along a brook
which flowed into the head of Bare Cove-one of those clear,
[6]
musical, New England brooks, bounding down over the rocks,
through narrow meadows of high lush grass-a brook which
to-day, unhappily, one would not know was in existence, so
thoroughly has it been boxed in for the convenience of the
town.
The valley in which the little settlement lay was narrow,
steep hills rising on each side, clothed with timber-primeval
timber--oak, hemlock, walnut, shagbark, ash, beech, cedar,
elm, wonderful woods to work with. Across from the main
group of houses, to the south of the brook, "on an eminence,"
stood the church, of logs, thatched, and, soon after Samuel's
arrival, to be surrounded by a palisade.
One of the first things Samuel had to learn was why it
was necessary to have a citadel in this little settlement, and
why military service was required of every one that had
reached his age and strength. The settlers then-and indeed
through all his life--had to keep the Indian constantly in
Samuel was not allowed to go a mile from his home
without his musket. When he went to church or to a town
meeting, he must go armed. There was a compensating con-
venience, for bullets were legal passing freely for
farthings. He took his tum at the guard that was set at
sunset. He learned, too, the Indian method of warfare,
fighting behind trees. To perfect her militia in this, Hing-
ham early forbade the cutting of the big timber in certain
sections in the town-it was kept for training purposes. One
part of the furnishing of Hingham church was a barrel of
powder, always kept full. So at the very start of Samuel's
life in the new world, there was the thrill of danger and
the responsibility of doing his part to meet it.
Samuel's first problem was to find work. There was no
chance for him at his trade. A man could not be spared at
that moment for weaving. The settlers' looms, what there
[7]
were of them, had been turned over to the women. But if
there was no work at his trade, there was plenty of other
kinds. It was nip and tuck to raise com enough for the
winter, to catch and salt enough fish, to cut wood for the
fire, to build the new houses that the rapidly increasing
population demanded. New Hingham was growing, and a
strong young man was in demand.
There was work in near-by settlements, too, when the
town consented that one go. There was Scituate, only about
ten miles to the southeast, several years older than Hingham.
There were Braintree and Hull, near neighbors. There was
Boston, rapidly growing, and demanding timbers, planks,
boards. There were young shipyards at various points, ready
to take masts. Then, too, a lively exchange of commodities
was soon going on with the English settlements to the south
in Virginia and the West Indies. We often forget, in reckon-
ing the chances that the New England settlers had for trade,
the excellent market provided by their own people in the
Barbadoes, Bermuda, St. Kitts, Old and New Providence. As
a matter of fact, when Samuel Lincoln began his business
career in New Hingham, there were four times as many
English people in the South and the West Indian colonies
as in all of New England.
In 1644 Samuel Lincoln's brother, Daniel, a bachelor,
died and left everything he had to Samuel. It helped him
to buy a five-acre tract of land in one of the best locations
along the brook, as one can see, going into Hingham to-day.
As you come in on the train from Boston you cannot miss,
looking out at the right, a glittering white statute of Daniel
Webster, standing in a beautifully kept flower garden. These
are the fields once owned by Samuel Lincoln, and up the
street a little farther stands an old house on the site of the
[8]
one that he built-or bought-in 1649. Nothing of the orig-
inal is left except some of the timbers.
Into this house Samuel took a wife. All that we know
of her is that her name was Martha. A nice problem for
ambitious young genealogists is to solve the family name of
the woman that Samuel Lincoln married. She must have
~ e n a vigorous woman, for she was splendidly equal to the
chief duty the settlement of a new country lays on women,
the bearing of many healthy children. Her first son was born
in 16 50 and baptized Samuel. In twenty-three years Martha
brought into the world eleven children. Advocates of birth
control may raise their hands in horror and expect to find
records of death accompanying those of birth. Three of
Martha's children did not grow up, but eight lived for
seventy years or thereabouts. And as for Martha herself, she
outlived Samuel, dying in 16g3.
Though there is nothing but a few old timbers left of
the home in which Samuel and Martha reared their family,
it is not difficult to reconstruct it. A house of stout timbers,
the very heart of which was the great fireplace, with its wide
hearth and deep oven, its shelf for dishes and cranes for pots,
its curved settees at either side, a candle shelf in the middle
of each high back, making cozy ingle nooks for the children
and their elders. Before this fireplace food was prepared
and eaten. Before it the family gathered to carry on a score
of simple industries. Before it they talked, popped their
com, and melted their maple sugar. Before it, too, they
knelt morning and night for prayer.
No doubt among the iron and pewter and wooden utensils
preserved to-day so carefully in New England by descendants
of the settlers, there are articles that Samuel and Martha
used; but, so far as I have been able to find, there are only
two in existence which we can say with any certainty were once
[g]
in their hands. These are a big and a little wooden mortar,
with their pestles, owned, as is proper, by descendants of
one of the early Hingham Lincolns. But if we cannot put our
hands on the chairs, the tables, the bedsteads and coverlets,
the Dutch oven and toasting fork, the wooden porringer, the
plates and saucers that they used, we can to-day with certainty
see what they were like in the town's excellent museum.
In Hingham, as in all of the Massachusetts colonies of
that day, the minister was the ruling spirit. The character,
the intelligence, the tolerance or intolerance of the community
depended largely upon him. When a man was a member of
the church-and he had no standing in the community if he
was not a member, not even being allowed to vote in civil
affairs-his thinking and actions were largely shaped by the
minister. Luckily for Samuel, and I think for his descendants,
the minister under whom he sat was far and away from being
the worst of the Puritans. The Reverend Peter Hobart had an
independent spirit and a more liberal mind than the men at
the head of the government and many of the ministers of
the Colonies.
He was devoted to his parish. Much of the little docu
mentary evidence of what went on in the town in Samuel's
day comes from Peter Hobart's habit of setting down what
happened from day to day. His diary, carefully done up
in red morocco, has found a safe place in the files of the
Massachusetts Historical Society.
It is a book well worth looking at-bound in wizened
leather, a homemade binding, I take it, from the way the
leather is folded over the pasteboard cover and from the
narrow leather thongs that bind it-a wonderful thing to get
your hands on if you care for ink and paper and the way
they stand up under time. I have seen two manuscript copies
of Peter Hobart's diary, the one made perhaps forty, the
[1o]
other fifty, years ago, and in both of them the ink and paper
are .faded and old, compared with the original, the first entry
of which was made at least 287 years ago, with the intro-
ductory remark: "I with my wife and four chyldren Came
safely to New England June ye 8: 1635: for ever praysed be
the god of Heaven, my god and king."
On almost every page of the book one finds a Lincoln-
born, married, died-a populous, growing line. These were
not all kin to Samuel, by any means, for to Hingham there
had come just before or after he did other Lincolns, distantly,'
if at all, related. Indeed, there were at least eight settlers
of the name-sturdy people. To-day, as in Samuel's day,
the most frequent name in the town records of Hingham-
including the telephone book-is Lincoln.
The fact that Samuel Lincoln was and remained a church
member throughout his life is proof enough that !te walked
a straight and narrow path. Life was a serious matter under
Peter Hobart-a matter of strictest rules, that the church
authorities saw to it that you obeyed or knew the reason why.
There was no escape from church going, for every Sunday
morning a church officer went from house to house, running
in idlers. There was no sleeping in church, for at every
service a hawk-eyed watchman sat in the rear of the great
bare room, .knocking the head of any man who dozed with
a pole, tickling the ear of any woman with a feather. You
must at least appear to listen to Peter Hobart's two-hour
sermons on fallen m n ~ an angry God, election, damnation,
eternal fire.
Severe and forbidding as it all sounds, life must have been,
in the main, healthy and full of interest. Theological dis-
cussions exercise t h ~ mind if they do not entertain it. There
is a curious kind of pleasure in horrors, and no doubt the
[11]
orgies of terror in which the early Puritans indulged had
their fascination.
Their religion, too, was not of a kind which made men
inexpressive or servile. Under Peter Hobart's leadership,
indeed, it was just the opposite. Samuel has been but a few
years in Hingham when the town was enlivened by a quarrel
with the General Court, a sort of colonial council at Boston,
which set them all by the ears: a test-most necessary at the
moment--of how far central authority was to interfere with
local liberty.
The trouble arose over the captaincy of Hingham's com-
pany of militia. The majority of the town fell out with the
man who had held the position for some time and elected
a successor. The General Court refused to ratify. Peter
Hobart led in a revolt against this decision, and signed a
petition asking reconsideration.- Governor Winthrop and the
magistrates resented this questioning of their authority. There
was a trial-a trial which went against Hingham and led to
the fining of a number of the citizens, Peter Hobart among
them. Hobart was loud in contempt; there was no reason
for the fine, he said, except that he had signed a petition,
and he hinted that the General Court was going beyond the
powers of its charter, not only in this case, but others.
All of this, of course, only stiffened the backs of the
authorities. Hobart was a marked man. On a later occasion,
when the ministers of the colony had been summoned to con-
sultation, he was ordered out of the meeting. And again,
when a great marriage of a former Hingham resident was
to be solemnized at Boston, and Hobart was asked to come
and preach, the magistrate sent him home. The reason they
gave was that he was a "bold man and would speak his
mind."
The quarrel was a long time in subsiding. The minority
[12]
which backed up the central authorities claimed that the
development of Hingham was seriously injured by its spirit
of revolt. However, what they may have lost in numbers was
balanced by a vigorous spirit which continued unafraid to
challenge even ecclesiastical authority if their rights were
invaded.
Just as Samuel Lincoln was obliged to consider where
local authority should end and central authority begin, so
he was early obliged to consider that standing question of
the relative rights of rich and poor. Almost immediately
the unenfranchised settlers-and they made up four-fifths of
the people-had lined themselves up against the ruling few.
Again and again the struggle shows itself in the records of
the doings of the magistrates.
A classical case is that of Mrs. _Sherman, who had lost a
sow. Runaway animals, particularly pigs, were one of the
chief annoyances of the early settlers, and it is not to be
wondered that a stray was often captured and confined by
the husbandman prosperous enough to provide himself with
pens. Mrs. Sherman had no pen, and she brought suit against
a neighbor who, she believed, had captured the animal she
had lost. The documents in the case seemed to show that
the lady did not have satisfactory evidence that the sow she
claimed was hers, and yet, in spite of this, the deputies stood
by her-she was poor, the man she sued was rich.
Indians, damnation, infant baptism, the rich against the
poor, the tyranny of the General Court-these were the
questions that Samuel Lincoln was forced to consider and
that kept his and his neighbors' minds
active-not altogether peaceful subjects, but stout ones, fit
for men, bound to develop grit, character.
Unhappily, not all of the Hingham discussions in which
Samuel Lincoln must have taken part were as worthy in
[13]
IN THE FOOTSTEPS oF THE LINCOLNS
substance as these. In the later years of his life, Hingham
was rent' in twain by a row over the site of a new church-
a common enough happening among the Puritans. Indeed,
Cotton Mather complains that in the Colonies "the re
building and removing of meeting houses unfitted neighbors
for lifting up pure hands without wrath in those houses."
It certainly did so in Hingham.
A new meeting house had become necessary. It was
estimated that it would cost 4 so, besides what could be
gotten for the old building. In 1680 a subscription was taken
up to which 143 members put their names. Samuel and his
sons did very well, putting in, between them, something like
5. Then came the question of the site. It was to be changed.,
and there was sharp division of opinion. In 1681 the con-
stable took a vote "for another place to get ye new meeting
house on." The majority ruled, but the feud has never q u ~ t
died out. "If they had not put the meeting house there,"
, I once heard a Hingharnite say !
However, that meeting house, built in 1681 with the
money that Samuel and his sons and his neighbors subscribed,
still stands; its splendid timbers, sound and seasoned, are to
be seen in its loft. It has been enlarged, to be sure, ceiled,
made comfortable in many ways unknown to Samuel's day,
~ t its bones and sinews are the same. And it has the dis-
tinction of being the oldest meeting house in this country, to
have been in continuous use for as long as 240 years.
Samuel Lincoln worshiped in it to the end of his life.
That end came on May 26, 16go. Under that date, Daniel
Cushing put down in his account book: "old Sam Linkoln
tl.yed o ~ the small pox." Dread disease--the only disease one
finds mentioned in Peter Hobart's diary or Daniel Cushing's
account book.
Samuel undoubtedly was buried in the family lot in the
[14]
OPENING ENTRY OF THE DIARY OF REV, PETER HOBART
RECORD OF SA:MUEL LINCOLN's DEATH FouND IN DANIEL CuSHING's AccouNT BooK
'OLD SHIP CHURCH" oF HINGHAM, MAss., BuiLT IN 1681 AND IN CoNTINuous UsE FOR
MoRE THAN 240 YEARS
old cemetery, but no mark of his grave nor of that of Martha,
his wife, nor of the three babies she lost, exists to-day. Hing
ham seems to have gone through a period of vandalism in
the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nine-
teenth centuries, when its chief idea was to rid itself as
completely and as rapidly as possible of the old graveyard
and all that was in it, above and below the ground. I do
not know that I have ever come across any more ruthless
treatment than this that Hingham gave to the graves of the
men and women who had broken the first ground and put up
the first houses and built the first church, as well as the church
of which they are so proud to-day. They wanted the land,
wanted it for shops and an easier approach to the bluffs
beyond, so they hacked down the hill, dumping bones and
headstones into something like a garbage heap as they went.
Hingham's boys and girls of the early nineteenth century
remembered the old burial ground as a cow pasture, with
heaps of broken coffins, fragments of shrouds and decaying
bones scattered about. They played push ball on the flat
tombstones and fought Indian battles among the graves of
their fathers.
The old slate headstones, one of which undoubtedly
belonged to Samuel, were many of them sold. There are at
least two chimneys to be seen in Hingham to-day into which
it is known that headstones went, and I was told on a visit
to the town in 1922 that only a short time before, when
repairs were making on the old dye house, the great doorstep
-a fine piece of stone-was turned over, only to discover
that it was the headstone of one of the Rev. Peter Hobart's
family.
But Samuel Lincoln, though dead and his bones un-
honored, did not pass out of the life of New Hingham. He
left behind four sons, grown, and four daughters. These
[15]
children he had seen married into the best of Hingham's
families. In the old home in which he died his oldest son,
his namesake, was living; and there, sitting at the fireside,
was his grandson, Samuel. He was not to know it, but it
was to be true, that out of the line of this oldest son were to
come some of the most distinguished of New England's
citizens, among them three governors of commonwealths. He
was not to know, but it is true, that from another of his sons,
the one whose acquaintance we shall now make, was to come
the man who was to contribute, as much as any man which
this or any other country has produced, to the solution of
those tangled problems of liberty and authority, of the rich
and the poor, of tolerance and intolerance, with which he had
been forced to grapple in those early days.
[16]
II
MORDECAI LINCOLN, IRON MASTER
W
HEN Samuel Lincoln came to New Hingham in 1637,
the settlements of the Massachusetts Colony and its
neighbor, Plymouth, to the south, were but little more than
scraps of human fringe along the Atlantic coast. The problem
of the newcomers was to strengthen the footholds which they
made and to widen, stretch, and unite them. This meant for
their children that some should stay at home, that others
should go north or west or south. Of Samuel and Martha
Lincoln's four sons it fell to the oldest, the father's namesake,
to stay in the old homestead in Hingham, to ply his trade,
which was that of a carpenter, and to Daniel, the second, to
cultivate the lands there which had come into the family
by purchase, allotment, or inheritance.
It fell to the other three sons to go out from their home
town and extend the work of settlement. It is with the
third, Mordecai, we are concerned, because he was to carry
down the line to Abraham Lincoln.
In 1655, Martha had given birth to a baby boy that had
lived only about three weeks. She called the child Mordecai.
Two years later she bore another boy, and him, too, she called
Mordecai. It was a practice common enough in those days,
this carrying on of a name. Indeed, back in England, it had
not been uncommon for two living children to be called by the
same name, senior and junior being used to distinguish them.
Little Mordecai had the training that Hingham was giving
to all its boys and girls-eleven months and two weeks steady
[17]
of school. The teacher, whose pay, so the records show, was
twenty-four bushels of grain, paid quarterly, taught the
children not only their three R's, but a little of Latin and
Greek. It was severe teaching. No modem ideas softened
it, and the only appeal that was made to the imagination was
the appeal of terror. In all New England at this date there
was scarcely a book-and certainly none within the reach of
boys and girls-lighter in weight than the Doomsday Book.
Mordecai went to church as well as to school, and sat
through two-hour sermons. He listened to them, too, for he
knew well enough that both at home and at school he would
be catechised on their content.
It takes more than a scowling church and a stem school-
master to kill joy in well-fed youth. Mordecai Lincoln's
home overran with youth, brothers and sisters tumbling over
one another. The town was full of youth, and there was
the wonderful out-of-doors. The Puritan fathers probably
did not approve of the beauty of the New England spring,
the warmth of its summer, the glory and languor of its
autumn, nor the warm tingling of blood that the cold of
winter brought; but they could not destroy them, nor prevent
the stir and the happiness they brought to the heart of the
young.
Mordecai Lincoln grew up a husky boy, full of energy-
the kind that is eager to move on, to strike out for himself.
He must have a trade, and he chose that of blacksmithing.
Why he should have left Hingham and gone across the bay
to Hull to learn blacksmithing, I do not know. Possibly
there was a better chance there, but I like to think it was
a girl who was drawing him. At l e ~ s t if it was not before
he went to Hull that he met Sarah Jones and found that she
was the one for him of all the daughters of the coast, he
discovered it soon after, and married her.
[18]
MORDECAI LINCOLN, IRONMASTER
The Jones family to which Sarah belonged had come to
New Hingham about the same time that Samuel Lincoln did,
and later established themselves at Hull, where Sarah had
'been born and reared. She and Mordecai remained in Hull
some years, and there, or possibly across the bay at Martha
Lincoln's, her first two children were born. The elder, who
came in 1686, Sarah named after his father, Mordecai; the
second, two years younger, she called after her father,
Abraham-the first Abraham in the Lincoln family.
There is every reason to suppose that Mordecai Lincoln
prospered in Hull, but he was not the kind of a man to
remain at a forge which was not his own. Why should he not
have a forge of his own'? Why should he not become an iron-
master'? He began to look about for a site, with power, some-
where outside of Hull. And, naturally enough, he looked
toward a new Hingham development, Cohasset, where already
his older brother, Daniel, was settled, and where there was
every prospect of a thriving independent town.
What a human story is the settlement of Cohasset! The
township that we now know under that name lay next to the
sea on the southern border of the Plantation of Hingham.
Just to its south was the northernmost settlement of Plymouth
Colony, Scituate. Between the two a natural boundary lay,
a bay and a long salt inlet with great marshes covered with
rich salt grass. The boundary between this part of Hingham
(Cohasset) and Scituate had not been fixed at the start, and
there was, naturally enough, much contention over the fine
uplands and these rich marshes. The very year that Samuel
landed in the new world the two colonies had appointed a
commission-so far as I know the first intercolonial commis-
sion appointed in what was to be New England-to fix this
boundary.
There were great names on that commission-John Endi-
[19]
cott, Governor Bradford, Edward Winslow. They fixed a
brook, flowing into the salt inlet-Bound Brook, it is called
-as the dividing line. Scituate was never satisfied with the
decision and frequently pulled up the stakes that the Hing
hamites had set and cut grass t ~ ~ they claimed. There was
bickering for years over this boundary. As a matter of fact,
it took two hundred years to settle it finally, and it is easy
enough among old settlers in those parts to-day to get up a
heated discussion over the settlement finally made.
The Hinghamites not only quarreled with Scituate over
the Cohasset hills and meadows, they quarreled with one
another about the use of them. As soon as the hay was cut
it was customary to send their dry cattle, many hogs and
goats, there to pasture; and, although the t ~ w n kept a herds
man to look after these animals, they were constantly mixing,
and disputes over the ownership of a sow, a heifer, a goat
disturbed the peace of the community.
The value of these common lands and the trouble that
grew out of a general use of them caused strong pressure,
of course, for their division. It took a long time to hit upon
a plan to which every one would agree. Finally the tract
was cut up into seven hundred shares, and then there was
a drawing by lot. Samuel Lincoln and his family came off
well in this drawing, as any one can see that examines the
original plot. Mordecai's older brother, Daniel, took ad-
vantage of the new property. He was. one of the first persons
to build a house in Cohasset. This was in 168 5.
It was natural enough, then, with the family holdings
that lay in Cohasset, and with Daniel in a fair way to become
one of the settlement's leading citizens, that Mordecai should
look about in that vicinity for a site for his proposed water
power.
A couple of miles from his brother Daniel's place he
[20]
found what he wanted-a little fall where Bound Brook
leaps into an arm of the salt inlet, called the Gulf. Here was
power to be had by building a dam. A half interest in this
fall, in enough of the brook for a pond and enough land on
which to put a mill, Mordecai bought in 1691 for $35 And
here he soon had a sawmill.
On the rising land above the marshes on the Cohasset side
he . built a house-a hip-roofed house with long sloping rear,
burned only a few years ago. The new home looked out
over the marshes and to the mouth of Bound Brook, where
Mordecai had made his pond and built his mill. To this
house he brought Sarah and his two boys.
But this mill did not satisfy Mordecai. He followed up
the stream to a second dip in the water, and there he built
a dam and a grist mill; and then still farther up to a place
where a little island rises in Bound Brook, and here he built
a third dam, this time for a forge.
There are times in the year when Bound Brook has no
great flow of water, and it became Mordecai's problem to so
utilize what did come that he could run each one of his
three plants at least two days of a week. The scheme he
worked out won him fame through all the Hingham and
Scituate settlements.
On Saturday night he closed his upper dam in such a way
as to save all the water that came down. By Monday morn-
ing there was enough to run his upper mill for two days. By
closing the second dam, he could hold this water so that
he could run mill number two for two days. He repeated
the process at the lowest dam, at the mouth of the brook.
That is, during all the dry season, so the story runs, Mordecai
Lincoln had water to run his three mills a part of each week.
His best title to fame, however, is not this ingenious
manner of handling water. It was the fact-and a fact to
[21]
he noticed in the industrial history of the United States-
that this great-great-great-grandfather of Abraham Lincoln
was one of the first ironmasters in the country; that is, one
of the first men who actually made iron.
At his upper dam he and a group of neighbors started a
furnace. The ore that he used he brought from the bogs to
the south in the township of Pembroke, some ten miles away.
It was what is known as bog iron-moor iron, the English
call it. It lay in lumps of moderate size-lumps full of
holes, much of it so soft that it could be crushed between
the fingers.
Down in this Pembroke district, where Mordecai Lincoln
went for his iron ore, lived a man whose name arouses specu-
lation to-day-Benjamin Hanks. Were he and Mordecai
friends'? Hanks was one of the leading Pembroke citizens,
and he must have been a man of imagination, a lover of
the sea and exposed sites, for a few years later it was he
who bought Saquish Head, looking northwest across Duxbury
Bay to Captain's . Hill, where the Standish monument stands,
southwest to Plymouth. Benjamin Hanks took his family
. here and built a home, which still stands. It is believed by
many, though they are unable to give convincing documentary
evidence of their belief, that this man was the first American
ancestor of Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln.
For smelting the Pembroke ore, Mordecai, of course, had
to have charcoal-not a difficult thing to get, with an
abundance of the best woods for that purpose all about him.
Those of Cohasset to-day who explore the hills around, look-
ing for tilting rocks, big bowlders, pot holes, striations, kelms,
and the numerous other interesting glacier evidences in which
this neighborhood is so rich, are sure, sooner or later, to
stumble upon the remains of one of Mordecai Lincoln's char
coal pits.
[22]
Mordecai not only made iron in his smelter; he set up a
forge with a trip hammer, and here made the articles most
needed in the community-nails, bolts, hinges-witch hinges,
perhaps-pots, skillets, andirons, tongs, shovels, pokers-
kind of things that you could not well get along without,
either within or without doors. Pity is it that he did not put
his mark upon these articles. Who can say what of the primi-
tive iron utensils that are treasured in museums and house-
holds up and down the south shore were or were not made by
Mordecai Lincoln'?
His busy, successful life was saddened toward the end
of the century by the death of Sarah, his wife. She left him
with four children, the oldest, his namesake, probably about
fourteen, the youngest a little girl of five or six. He was
not slow, however, in remarrying. His choice was a widow of
Braintree, Mary Chapin-six years his junior.
For this new wife he built a spacious home in one of the
loveliest sites of all Scituate-a little promontory running into
the Gulf at the mouth of Bound Brook. Here, looking out
over the marshes on one side, on to falls, mill pond, and mill
on the other, the house still stands. You reach it from the
Cohasset station by following South Main Street for perhaps
two miles. As you approach the mouth of the brook, there
rises to your right a height known as Lincoln Hill.
A little farther on the road turns across the stream and one
comes suddenly on to the mill and the house. The original
mill has been replaced again and again, I take it, for almost
without cessation some kind of activity has gone on there.
The house was one of the most attractive of the satisfactory
New England designs-two stories, with a square entry, a
winding stair in the center, a tremendous chimney. To the
left of the entry was the kitchen, with its oaken rafters, ceiled
walls, and noble fireplace. For over two hundred years this
[23]
home that Mordecai Lincoln built for the Widow Chapin
has stood. And to-day one has the solid satisfaction of know-
ing that it is in the hands of those who appreciate both its
fine, simple architecture and its historical significance. If
modified by sun porches and conveniences and coats of .Paint,
it has been, luckily, not ruined. The present owner treats
it with both love and reverence. "Think of having come
from the West," he says, "and to have stumbled . upon a
thing of this kind. How did it escape from all those:
Easterners who come out from the cities for sununer homes
and build nothing so good'? And as for the site, look at it.
what a joy it is!"
Absorbed as Mordecai Lincoln was in his business, there
were town affairs, church affairs to which he must give at;.
tention. There was the heated agitation as to whether or
not Cohasset should have its own church and school, now that
the settlement was growing so large. Here they were, resi-
dents of Hingham, of course, but forced to travel four. or
five miles to church and school. For most of the elders and
probably all of the children, it meant walking- walking,
many months of the year in snow and cold. Where there
was h o r s ~ in a family it was used, generously used, too, for
the Cohasset settlers frequently practiced what was knOwn as
"riding and tying"-a couple riding a mile and tying their.
horse and , walking ahead. . The first couple of walkers be-
hind took the horse and rode until they overtook the owners.
In this gracious way the Cohasset settlers, many of them, '
made their way to the old church in Hingham.
As for the school, the children could not go, at least regu
larly. It was not only the distance, the exposure in bad
weather, but it was the danger, the hills of Hingham at cer- .
tain seasons of the year being beset with wolves. The pits in
w.h.ich they 'were captured can still be seen. There began to be
[24]
HousE BUILT IN SciTUATE, l\t1Ass., EARLY IN THE 18TH CENTURY BY MoRDECAI LINCOLN,
SoN oF SAMUEL LINCOLN
(From photograph made in 1922)
RESTORED TAP RooM OF THE OLD ORDINARY-Now THE HISTORICAL MusEuM-oF
HINGHAM, MASS.
frequent petitions that Hingham would allow them a school
of their own. That meant, however, that they should be
relieved of the taxes that they were paying for the Hingham
school. This could not go on indefinitely. They urged and
urged upon Hingham to let them build their own meeting
house, hire their own schoolmaster. It was not until 1 713
that the hard-headed inhabitants of the mother settlement
granted that the "inhabitants of Cohasset shall have liberty
to get up and erect a meeting house there on that land called
the plain."
In this long contention Mordecai Lincoln's brother Daniel
took a rather more prominent part than Mordecai did. As
a matter of fact, Mordecai, having his residence just over
the line in Scituate, was not so nearly concerned. Daniel,
however, was a leader in the movement. Indeed, to his death,
he was distinctly a first citizen, a prosperous farmer, so
prosperous that he was one of the handful of people in
Cohasset who owned a slave.
Mordecai and Daniel were obliged to consider matters
of more serious import than their local independence. It
was in their time that the magistrates of Massachusetts
waged their frenzied war against witchcraft in the colony.
The blackest page in that warfare was the strange and hys
terical persecutions in Salem, where scores of people were
imprisoned or hurried to the gallows.
This terrible outbreak produced a reaction against in-
tolerance all up and down the shore. Men like Mordecai
Lincoln, men of healthy living, wholesome common sense,
even though brought up in the stern Puritan tradition, dealt
with all kinds of men. They instinctively revolted against
the Salem madness. It was people like them, the plain people
outside of ecclesiastical circles, that set their faces-slowly,
cautiously, to be sure, but increasingly-against the intoler-
[25]
ance of the Puritan church. The Puritan fathers did not
realize it, but they had put into the hands of the colonists
whom they were trying to beat into submission, the tools for
the ultimate overthrow of their ecclesiastical dictatorship.
When they made the colonists landholders, when they insisted
that every child should learn to read and that he should read
the New Testament as well as the Old, they created weapons
sure one day to act as boomerangs. Mordecai and Daniel
Lincoln were landholders, with all the independence of spirit
that controlling a bit of land gives. They were enterprising
business men, pushing ahead the material interests of their
family, their towns, their churches. They had been taught
to think by the hard Puritan discussions. The very train-
ing of their stern old leaders led them slowly to desert those
leaders.
Their instinct to revolt was fed constantly through grow-
ing communication with the outside world. The harbors
of Hingham and Cohasset were busier and busier with ships
coming and going. Men from the West Indies, Virginia,
New York, from across the seas, were constantly arriving.
Land travel was opening up. The Indian trails were now
followed by travelers on f<?Ot or horseback; and there were
not many nights when the "Old Ordinary" at Hingham did
not put up travelers that had come in ovetland as well as
those that liad come in by sea. Its taproom buzzed with
news, and often, too, with sounds of revelry.
It was from those that gathered in the taproom, that came
to do business with them at the forge, to buy corn or lumber,
that Mordecai and Daniel had news of what was goingon in
Rhode Island, in New York, in the new settlement called
Jersey, where it was said men could believe and practice what-
ever religion they wished, where even Quakers were tolerated.
Under the impact and challeRge of the young spirit of in-
[26]
dependence and of tolerance springing up in the Colonies
along the Atlantic coast and brought to them now constantly,
strict interpretation of the Puritan tradition was not long
possible for men of affairs like Mordecai Lincoln.
A few years after the death of Sarah, his wife, and his
marriage to the Widow Chapin, a second break came in the
family of Mordecai Lincoln: his oldest two sons, Mordecai
and Abraham, the one born in 1686, the other in 1688, left him.
One can only speculate why. So far as I have been able to
find, there is no scrap of paper in Scituate, Cohasset, or Hing-
ham to indicate why, when, or where they had gone. Was
it the stepmother'? One asks the question with interest. She
had given her husband a son. Did young Mordecai and
Abraham reckon that possibly there would be other sons com-
ing, and that their chance to carry on their father's activities
would be slimmer than they had hoped'? These are specula-
tions. All we know is that Mordecai's older two sons left
him, that their brother Isaac, nearly twenty now, remained,
and that when, in 1716, he married, his father built him a
house across the inlet.
The Widow Chapin added a daughter to the son she had
given. The house filled up. Mordecai saw grandchildren
corning. He saw his family among the most populous and
prosperous in Hingham and Cohasset. Indeed, if one reads
the early records of Hingham and Cohasset to-day he finds
scarcely any other name more frequently mentioned. Many
families, afterward to be distinguished in the country, were
his neighbors there in Cohasset-Beals, Pecks, Bateses-but
as numerous, prosperous and as useful as any was his own.
Such was Mordecai Lincoln, such his position in the com-
munity, such his surroundings, when suddenly, in 1727, a
fit of apoplexy carried him off. He had lived out his three
[27]
score years and ten, and, so far as worldly things were con
cerned, was prepared for death, for his will was made.
He left behind a big estate for those times-3,099 14s
8d.-carefully divided. The biggest part of the estate went
to the Widow Chapin's son Jacob-the house he had built
for her at Scituate, with its contents and with the lands and
mills. To his son Isaac, the house on the heights, across the
brook.
That there had been no serious differences between the
father and the sons, Mordecai and Abraham, whose dis-
appearance from Cohasset I have mentioned, the will shows,
for to the older son he gave 110 in bills of credit, and to
the younger 6o, "besides what he hath," which means, of
course, that he had already done something for Abraham.
That he knew where his sons were and that they were already
fathers of children is true, because he makes bequests to their
older children. An interesting provision in his will is that
for contributing to the "learning" of three of his grand-
children, should their parents bring them up to "liberal edu-
cation." Whether any one of them ever availed himself
of the chance I have been unable to find out.
Upon visiting Mordecai Lincoln's home to-day, one
should, on leaving it, drive south past the railroad station of
North Scituate, a half mile or so ahead, and inquire for the
Groveland Cemetery.
They send you over a pleasant road, up a hill, and there
you find it-an old, old yard, still in use and in good con-
dition. A little hunting brings you to the old slate head-
stones. And there, looking as fresh as the day they were put
up, you find, side by side, the stones of Mordecai and his second
wife, who had outlived him by eighteen years.
To those who love to reconstruct the lives of the sturdy
people who have made this country, there is ~ u r i o u s conso-
[28]
lation in sitting beside a well-kept, clearly marked grave of
a man who left behind him more blades of grass than he
found, a clean memory, a better chance for his sons and
daughters. A headstone and a grave seem strangely to round
out the earthly span. It seems a man's ~ i g h t At all events,
after vainly hunting through Hingham graveyards to find
the resting place of Samuel Lincoln and discovering that in
the necessary extension of the town its first graveyard had
been destroyed, there is satisfaction in knowing that Mordecai
Lincoln, his son, the great-great-great-grandfather of Abra-
ham Lincoln, has a peaceful resting place on a quiet hillside,
not far from the home he built and loved.
III
THE CALL OF NEW JERSEY
T
HE same reasons that brought the first American an
cestor of Abraham Lincoln to the Massachusetts coast
drove his successors deeper and deeper into the new world.
Samuel Lincoln came to America in 163 7 because of the dis-
content of his family and friends with religious, civil, and
economic conditions. He came, too, because he was young
and a wide ocean and a mysterious land invited him. In
every American generation he fathered there were one or more
men who, like him, pushed ahead into unbroken territory,
allured by the hope of larger wealth, of greater freedom of
action and thought, of more congenial companionship, and
always by the mystery of the unknown, the certainty of ad-
venture.
This pioneer spirit was particularly strong in two of
Samuel Lincoln's many grandsons-Mordecai and Abraham
-the former the great-great-grandfather of Abraham Lin-
coln, the latter a great-great-grand-uncle. Mordecai Lincoln
must have been at least twenty-one, his brother between
eighteen and twenty, when they left New England. The
first spot in which they took root was Monmouth County,
New Jersey.
And why New Jersey at the beginning of the eighteenth
century'? There were all the reasons for going there that call
men to new lands. After many years of struggle with the
Dutch, England had possession of the territory for good and
all, it seemed. She was anxious to settle it. She advertised
[30]
it broadly in Europe as a refuge for the oppressed, promising
"free liberty of conscience without molestation or disturbance
in the way of their worship." The oppressed-and Europe
had no lack of them-came in droves-Germans from the
Palatinate who had suffered from the persecution of Louis
XIV, French Huguenots, English Quakers and Baptists.
Go up and down New Jersey to-day. Study the names
of its towns, hunt up the history of many a deserted or semi-
deserted church, read the inscriptions on the tombstones, and
you get some sense of the variety of peoples that sought the
country when the word went abroad that here was a land
where there was to be complete freedom of thought.
The appeal drew not only people from the other side of
the ocean, but many from New England who had found the
Puritan domination hard. New-Englanders began early to
settle in the New Jersey territory; thus Newark was settled
by malcontents from Connecticut. Not only was New Jersey
advertised as a land of liberty, but it was pictured in a way
that would have done credit to the promoter of a modern
colonizing scheme, as a land of fertility, of mines-a place
where all of the women were beautiful; and, as one entertain-
ing chronicler declared, "every one carried a beautiful and
healthy child on her knee." It was to this land of freedom and
of promise that Mordecai and Abraham Lincoln made their
way.
It was probably in Middletown that the young men made
the acquaintances which were to decide where they were to
settle in New Jersey. A number of men had gone out from
Middletown some years before the Lincolns arrived, taking up
adjoining tracts of land in Freehold Township, Monmouth
County. ' The Burlington path, one of the most important of
the early New Jersey roads, formed the southern border of
these tracts. To the north of the "Middletown men's lots,"
[31]
as they are called in the old deeds, lay a tract of some 2, 1 oo
acres, known as the Buckhorn Manor, owned by one of the
leading men in the province, Richard Saltar.
There was a stream and pond within the Buckhorn Manor
-a good place for a forge, and the Middl.etown men needed
a forge. What more natural than that the young Lincolns,
fresh from their father's ironworks in Massachusetts, should
have seen the opportunity and arranged to set up a forge on
Richard Saltar' s land, or perhaps to carry on one already
there. Whichever it was, tradition still connects their name,
not Saltar's, with the old forge, though neither of them ever
owned land here.
Not long after Mordecai reached Freehold, he married-
married "well," one would say, for it was to no less a lady
than Hannah Saltar, the only daughter of Richard Saltar,
owner of Buckhorn Manor and other New Jersey lands. Their
marriage brought young Lincoln into a circle of people of
influence in the colony-Lawrences, Bordens, Holmeses. The
most important of his new relations was his wife's uncle,
Captain John Bowne, a rich merchant of Middletown.
How do we know this'? One of the curious features in
a hunt for ancestors is the help one gets out of ancient quar-
rels, usually quarrels over property. Genealogists and
biographers would be sadly hampered if it were not for the
inability of men to settle disputes out of court. It is be-
cause of a dispute over property that we have the necessary
documentary proof that Mordecai Lincoln married Hannah
Sal tar.
As I have already said, Hannah had a prosperous uncle,
Captain John Bowne. He was a fine, friendly man, but,
particularly in the latter part of his life, seems to have been
much worried over what was to become of his estate, for his
wife, though by all accounts an elegant and charming lady,
[32]
was a spendthrift. Never had he had so much trouble in the
world, he said, as with her. And finally, to prevent her
squandering his estate after his death. he made a will, limiting
her power and carefully dividing his property among rela
tives, appointing as executors his son Obadiah and his nephew,
Richard Saltar. Among the bequests in this will, which was
made in 1714, was 2 50 to a niece, "Hannah Lincon."
Now, Obadiah Browne, though able and active, was of
hasty and pugnacious temperament. On his father's death
he wanted the estate settled, and settled at once. He claimed
that several members of the family owed money, and he
pushed them hard for immediate payment. Richard Saltar
did not like this harsh hastiness, nor did Richa1d's son, John,
for he wrote a long conciliatory letter to "Hon'r Uncle
Obadiah," pleading for courtesy, particularly to "brother
lincoln." Obadiah remained obdurate, however, and when
"brotherlincon" failed to pay what he demanded, evidently
on the ground that he did not owe it, brought suit. And it
is throught this suit, brought before the New Jersey court six
different times in four years, and finally withdrawn by con-
sent of Obadiah's attorney, that we know that the Lincoln'
named both in Captain John Bowne's will and in John Sal
tar's letter was Mordecai.
Between the lines of the scant court record of these pro
ceedings, one reads various things-the persistent character
of Obadiah and the equally persistent character of Mordecai.
We also find there what one finds everywhere that the Lin
coins settled the trouble that county officials had in the spell-
ing of their name. In these brief entries there are four differ
ent spellings-Lincoln, Lincorn, Linckorn, Lincon.
Whatever may have been Obadiah's rights, one cannot but
be grateful for his tenacity .. If he had been as "courteous"
in money matters as his nephew John Saltar had asked him
[33]
to be, it is quite possible that Captain John Bowne's will
would never have been recorded, and that we would never
have known wh01n Mordecai Lincoln married.
True to the Lincoln tradition. that with a trade should
go ownership of land, both Mordecai and his brother Abraham
soon began to acquire property in New Jersey, Mordecai
buying of his father-in-law, in 1723, 400 acres in Middlesex
County, and Abraham what amounted to at least 440 acres
by 1730. Abraham's land lay about a mile and a half to the
east of the forge.
Although Mordecai Lincoln lived in Monmouth County
for many years, addtng to his land, and although probab]y
it was here that Hannah Saltar boreal] of their six children,
and although when he died in 1735-then a resident of
Pennsylvania-he still held something like 6oo acres of land
in New Jersey, there are to-day on]y meagre evidences of his
passing. Indeed, in but one other place where the Lincolns
halted in their migration from Massachusetts to Illinois-
a journey some 200 years long-have I found so little ma-
terial evidence of their life and labors. No timber of the
house in which Mordecai and Hannah lived seems to be left.
And as for the forge with which tradition links his name, I
once spent a day driving from point to point in Monmouth
County, consulting the best local authorities, and yet I could
find no reason for believing that it was in one place rather
than in another.
His name has persisted, however, or at least it did up to
the Revolutionary War-Mordecai's Gap and Lincoln Gap
are spots named in the orders given to the commander of the
militia of Monmouth County, in 1779, as localities for beacon
fires in case of danger.
One touching evidence of the passing of the Lincolns
through this part of the world is found in a little hillside
[34]
cemetery, just beyond the boundaries of Buckhorn Manor-
an ancient ground, first a family plot. On an uncut, red
sandstone block is an inscription which reads: "Deborah
Lincon aged 3 years 4 months May 15 1 720" Standing
in this little yard, looking across a lovely valley to the low
hills of o n m o u t ~ County, one can picture the pathetic little
procession which moved through the not too well worn paths
of the forests and valleys on that May day. There was no
church nor churchyard near them. The nearest place of
burial was this little family plot, and here, through neighborly
kindness, Mordecai and Hannah brought their little girl.
In spite of their holdings in New Jersey, Mordecai and
his brother Abraham were not satisfied. The transportation
facilities were much more difficult here than they had been
accustomed to in Massachusetts. Again, the settlement
around them was not growing with anything like the health
and rapidity that they had seen in the home from which they
had come.
Not far away, however, there was a thriving city-Phila-
delphia. No doubt they carried there many of the products
of their Monmouth County forge. No doubt they went there
for supplies. It was clear that there was a great future for
the iron industry along the Schuylkill River. Mines had
been opened in the mountains, there was transportation and
water power, furnaces and forges were beginning to spring
up, and it was natural enough that when Mordecai made the
acquaintance of two ironmasters, whose names are familiar
in the manufacturing history of that period-Samuel Nutt
and William Branson-and was invited into a partnership
with them, he should have taken advantage of the opening.
This he did in 1722, joining the two men in building iron
works at a place called Coventry, near where the French Creek
flows into the Schuylkill River.
[35]
The three acquired over 6oo acres of land and built a
"forge with engines," besides dwelling houses and "other
Buildings and Erections."
It was a beautiful spot on which they built their iron
works. Indeed a fairer land can hardly be imagined than this
Schuylkill River country, with its river, hills, valleys, grow
ing in delight the higher you ascend. But what man has done
to this land into which Mordecai Lincoln came! Follow
ing the Schuylkill out from Philadelphia, up past Coventry-
acres and acres of furnaces, and miles and miles of junk!
One understands as he passes there to-day why there must be
saloons and dance halls and riotous amusement for men and
women who work and live in these reeking places. They
must have something to make them forget. But when Mor
decai Lincoln had his forge in this land, the day's work done,
he did not have to run away from his thoughts. He had the
beauty of things, the quiet of things all about him. His home
was not like the homes in this tormented, dirty, dust-ridden
place. ~ is certainly a far cry from the conditions under
which Mordecai Lincoln made iron to those under which most .
iron is made to-day.
Beautiful as the land was, and successful as the iron works
were, Mordecai did not long continue in the partnership. In
172 5 he sold, for 500 of "Current lawful Money of
America," his one-third interest in the undertaking. There
is nothing in the papers recording the transaction that indi
cates why he withdrew. It may be that he had too much on
his hands, for evidently he was still carrying on his Mon-
mouth County business. Indeed, soon after this sale we find
him buying, in 1726, one hundred acres more of land of his
father-in-law, Richard Saltar.
But 500 acres in New Jersey does not seem to have been
enough for him. His eyes had rested too long on the Schuyl
[36]
kill country, for whose extraordinary beauty he appears to
have shared William Penn's enthusiasm. There was a gen-
eral belief, too, that up the river, in the mountains, were rich
mineral deposits. Mordecai, naturally land hungry and nat
urally adventurous, and having money at his command (his
father died in 172 7 and left him 11 o), bought in 1730
a tract of some 300 acres. Three years later he built a
home on his new estate, and into it he moved his family.
The house still stands. In August of 1922 I started out
from Reading, Pennsylvania, to find this home of Mordecai
Lincoln. I had studied my records to bad purpose. They told
me that when he first went to this part of the Schuylkill coun-
try, Berks County, he had settled in the town of Oley. Later
they said he lived in the town of Amity. Careless! y neglecting
[to do what every student of American localities should do at the
start, that is, study the changes in county and township bound
aries made through the years, and also never failing to re-
member that when the record talks of the town of Oley or of
Amity, it probably means a township, I wandered about
Berks County for twenty-four hours, seeking sites that do not
exist. Finally I discovered that Mordecai Lincoln's land
had first lain in the township of Oley, that a re-division of
the county had put it in the township of Amity, and that a
second re-division had put it in the township of Exeter. With
the three sites simmered down to one, it was an easy enough
matter to find the. home.
You must leave the highway to do it, but if it is in summer
or fall, with solid country roads, you have a delightful drive,
winding in and out country ways, with always new glimpses
of mountain and river. You come to the house as a surprise
-a turn in a descending road and there it is-steep-roofed,
deep basement, plastered walls-snuggled into the side of a
[37]
hill, above a brook which rushes down a mile or less to join
the Schuylkill. Beyond rises a blue mountain.
Nestled there on the hillside, with its terrace of old red
sandstone, its vines, its tiny servants' quarters, it has a look of
something foreign, spmething like that which one . often comes
across in Brittany. Although the house has . been enlarged,
so that the date stone "M L 1733,'' unfortunately, h ~ been
covered, nothing of its original charm has been .destroyed.
They even insist-those who hold it now-that the ,gnarled
old apple trees were planted by Mordecai Lincoln. it is
pretty certain that the hand-wrought hinges and bolts came
. from his forge.
It was a pleasant place in which to live, and we know
from the inventory of his personal estate that it .was well
furnished, for the time. Moreover, we know from this same
inventory that in the servants' quarters, which still stand
practically unchanged, Mordecai housed at least two slaves
to help him in his work!
To this pleasant place Mordecai Lincoln took a large
family. Not Hannah Saltar-she had died probably about
1727, leaving behind her five living children-her oldest a
son, John, and four daughters, all of whom were later to marry
into well-known families of Pennsylvania-Millard, Yarnall,
Tallman, Boone. Mordecai, like his father before him, seems
to have remarried promptly enough. There is doubt about
the family name of Mary, his new wife, though probably it
was Robeson----early settlers in this part of the world.
The Lincoln's were not without neighbors. The most im-
portant of these were the Boones. There was George Boone,
about Mordecai's age, with Deborah Howell,. his wife, living
with their ten children not far away. There was Squire
Boone, the father of Daniel, with his big family. Any one
visiting Mordecai Lincoln's home in Exeter to-day should
[38]
HOUSE BUILT IN 1733 IN BERKS Co., PENNSYLVANIA, BY MORDECAI LINCOLN,
GREAT-GRANDFATHER OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
(From photograph made in 1909)
HEADSTONE OF A GRAVE IN COVEI,L'S
HILL CEMETERY, MoNMOUTH Co.,
NEW JERSEY
Deborah is believed to have been the
child of Mordecai and Hannah
Lincoln

FACSIMILE OF SIGNATURE OF MORDECAI
LINCOLN, SR., FROM Hrs \VrLL,
D.\TED MAY 3, 1727
(Courtesy of Houghton, Mifflin C'o.)
certainly not fail to go across field if he loves walking or
drive around to the home of Squire Boone. It was a fine house
that he had built over the hill from Mordecai Lincoln's. It
is a fine house to-day, though vacant. In the summer of 1922
its doors were wide open, there was no caretaker on the place,
its only protection the fact that it is reached by a little
traveled cross-field road.
The Lincoln and Boone children grew up together. One
can see them racing back and forth over the fields, and
naturally enough, although Mordecai was not to live to see
it, as they grew older, falling in love. Mordecai's daughter
Sarah was to marry a Boone, and his youngest son, Abraham,
a daughter of that house.
The Boones were Quakers, as indeed were many of Mor-
decai's friends. His association and the subsequent inter
marriage of his children with Quakers, as also the children
of his brother Abraham, who by this time had left New Jersey
and settled near Philadelphia, show how far this branch of
Samuel Lincoln's family had gone away from Puritan in-
tolerance. They were living in neighborly, friendly fashion
beside a sect that only a few years before had been brutally
treated in the Puritan Plantation which their father and
grandfather, their uncles and granduncles had helped to found
and to whose ecclesiastical dictatorship they had been loyal.
As a matter of fact, at this point of the association of the
Lincoln's with the Quakers, the intolerance is shown on the
other foot. When Mordecai's youngest son, Abraham, came
to marry Ann Boone, as he did in 1760, she was disciplined
for her "disorderly act."
There is every reason to believe that Mordecai Lincoln
at once stepped into a good position in the country to which
he had come. We find him a justice of the peace, and an
inspector of highways. If he could have lived to the good old
[39]
age of his father and grandfather, there is little doubt that he
would have been prominent in the affairs of the colony, but
only two years after he built his new house he was stricken. In
February, 1735, when he was only forty-nine years of age,
we find him making his will, evidently in a great hurry, "he
ing sick and weak in body," as he says.
The estate which Mordecai Lincoln had accumulated in
the forty-nine years of his life, and now divided, was a sub
stantial one. There were at least I,ooo acres of land, com-
bining what he held in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania;
and it is interesting to note that he gave all of his New Jer
sey lands to Hannah Saltar's children, his Pennsylvania hold-
ings to the children of his second wife.
Mordecai Lincoln took care, too, that his going should not
break up the home in Exeter, for in giving all his "goods and
chattels, Quick (slaves!) and dead" to his "beloved wife
Mary," he enjoined her to remain on his "plantation" until
his children were all of age, "the better," as he puts it, "to
bring up all of my children without wasting or embezzling
what I have left them." Mary Lincoln carried out his wish,
staying on with her four step-daughters and her two little
boys, Mordecai, now six, and Thomas, four. Five months
after her husband's death, in 1736, she bore a third son, and
to this son she gave the name of Abraham.
It was her sons, not Hannah Saltar's, that carried on the
name of Lincoln in Berks County-and carried it on with
honor. When the struggle for independence came, one of
her boys, Mordecai, served as a quarter-master in the Revolu-
tionary army. Later the boy Abraham-the boy born after
his father's death-became a prominent man in the state,
representing Berks County in Pennsylvania's most important
deliberations. It was this Abraham that married Ann Boone,
[40]
and his descendants are still counted among the useful and
respected citizens of this part of Pennsylvania.
How can one, following this outline of Mordecai Lincoln's
struggle with the wilderness, and taking a glimpse at what he
left behind him, say that he had not played the part of a man
in the world, a man not afraid to give himself to daring en-
terprises, not afraid to throw aside the prejudices of his early
surroundings and live in tolerance and friendliness with those
of different religion and tradition-a man, too, who left be-
hind him. noble sons and daughters to carry on noble l i v s ~
How untrue and unjust are those biographers who, even to-
day, speak of Mordecai Lincoln and his descendants as
"wanderers of the forest" who "sank to the bottom of the
social scale"
IV
"VIRGINIA JOHN"
I
T was Mordecai Lincoln's intention-one gathers from his
will-that 300 acres of the land he owned in New Jersey
should be carried on by his oldest son, John, the child of his
first wife; and, had John been content to settle in New Jersey
and prove himself an industrious and conservative citizen, he
might have gone far because of his excellent family connec-
tions. He had an uncle-his mother's brother-a member of
the New Jersey Council and later chief justice of the Supreme
Court of the state. He had hosts of cousins-first, second
and third-among the Saltars and Holmeses, and Lawrences
and Bownes. But John Lincoln was too much like his father
to retrace steps that he had taken westward; and, instead
of going back to New Jersey after his father died in 1737,
he remained in Pennsylvania.
He acquired property in Berks County. He made con-
nections in Lancaster County to the south. He married a
wife, who began to bear him sons and daughters; Rebecca her
given name; and that was all that was known of her until
Waldo Lincoln, President of the American Antiquarian So-
ciety, published recently his account of the descendants of
Samuel Lincoln-over 31 oo of them! There we learn that
Rebecca was a widow with one son when John Lincoln married
her in 1743-Mrs. Rebecca (Flowers) Morris, probably of
Berks County.
All we know of John Lincoln comes from assessment rolls,
deeds, the dry words by which men keep track of taxes and
[42]
''VIRGINIA JOHN"
property, words which so rarely give you a gleam of anything
personal with which to build up the character and the activities
of the man in whom you are interested. What can we gather
of the kind of man John Lincoln, the great-grandfather of
Abraham Lincoln, must have been from the fact that in 1746
he bought some fifty acres of land on Union Street in Berks
County, or that two years later he sold the New Jersey land his
father had left him-,300 acres-for "200 pounds current
money of N. J. at 8 shillings p. ounce"'? Very little. What
can we learn of his activities in Lancaster County from the fact
that in 1748 he wrote into the deed by which he conveyed his
New Jersey property that he was a weaver and of the "Town-
ship of Camarvin ( Caenarvon), county of Lancaster and
province of Penselvania." It is so little that, in the fall of
1922, I went to Lancaster County to see for myself just what
remnants of his doings there he had left behind.
So far as I was able to find, there is no stone or record to
show that he was ever in that county, except his own state-
ment in the deed I have referred to, dated 17 48. And yet,
in this corner of Lancaster the name Lincoln is comrrion
enough. Mordecai's Thomases and Abrahams lie in the grave-
yards. One of the finest old places in the vicinity of Church-
town, Lancaster County, "Whitehall," was long the property
of an Abraham Lincoln, described by those who knew him as
the "very image of the President."
One thing we can be sure of is that John Lincoln was an
active business man. He had written himself down as a
weaver, but what amount of weaving he did or where he did
it there is no indication. When it came to dealings in land,
however, it is another matter. His transactions were numer-
ous and profitable. Indeed, on two parcels in Berks County
he made some 534 in two years.
The rapid rise of land values in the Schuylkill country
[43]
IN THE FOOTSTEPS. OF THE LINCOLNS
was due to many things-the fertility of the soil, its mineral
riches, its varied industries, and particularly the highways.
Two of the most important roads in the country ran through
Lancaster County-one westward to Pittsburg and the other
-which interests us particularly-southward from the bor-
ders of Canada, through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia
to the Yadkin River in North Carolina. They were a tre-
mendous asset to Berks and Lancaster counties.
Then, too, the variety of industries carried on by the set-
tlers had its influence on values. It was not only farming and
mining that they were developing. Beautiful printing was
done at the Ephrata Cloister-a settlement of Seven-Day
Baptists, neighbors of John Lincoln when he lived in Caenar-
von township. Glassware, ironware and pottery also were
made, the pieces of which are treasured to-day for the quality
of their workmanship, the quaintness and originality of their
designs. It was in this part of the world that was developed
that wonderful carryall which has taken such a large part
in the opening of the country, the Conestoga wagon.
Not only was John Lincoln living among a people who
were pushing forward an unusual industrial development, but
a people of varied religious and social points of view. No-
where had there settled so many different sects, and nowhere
did they, on the whole, live side by side with so little con-
tempt and persecution of one another. There had early come
into this land Moravians, Dunkards, Amish people, and
these lived undisturbed side by side with Quakers, Catholics,
Jews, as well as descendants of Puritans. They are there
to-day, wearing the same cut of hat and coat and bonnet and
gown that they did in John Lincoln's day, following the
same simple forms of worship, living as frugally and accumu-
lating as steadily. They give a sense of stability which is
usually lacking in even the best of purely American towns.
[44]
"VIRGINIA JOHN"
They give Lancaster County a picturesque quality unlike any
thing else that I know in the country. Moreover, they are a
continual call to peaceful living.
But, prosperous and interesting as the country was, it was
not holding John Lincoln. He had begun to feel the pull of
a new migration, a pull to which many about him were yield
ing, that of the Shenandoah Valley, the land through which
the great southward highway ran.
It was early in the century that stories of this new land
began to come back. They came from those daring explorers,
who, frequently alone, gun in hand, made their way deeper
and deeper into the wilderness, led sometimes by hope of
founding an empire for themselves, sometimes through pure
love of adventure, and not unfrequently by the desire to carry
some favorite form of religion to the Indians. Many of
these early visitors into the Shenandoah Valley were Germans
from Lancaster County. Indeed, the first real settler, one
Adam Miller,- came. from Lancaster.
Virginia was liberal in grants of land and of trade mo-
nopolies to those who promised a bona fide settlement beyond
the Blue Ridge, and one of the first of these early grants went
to a member of a family that John Lincoln and his father
must ha:ve known well back in New Jersey, Benjamin Borden.
John's uncle Abraham had been a neighbor of these Bordens,
their lands adjoining. The Virginia Borden advertised his
land briskly in Pennsylvania, and what more natural that; in
carrying on this advertising, he should look for those with
whose names he was familiar. And that meant, of course,
he would look up the Lincolns.
As early as 1735 a neighbor of John's father, George
Boone, bought a large tract in the Valley. There must have
been much talk about the Lincoln fireside of this purchase,
as well as of what Borden was offering. Every day John
[45]
Lincoln saw the "Northern men," as the Virginians called
the Pennsylvanians, migrating south in increasing numbers-
Germans, Scotch-Irish, now and then a Hollander, as well
as representatives of all of the varieties of religious sects
which surrounded him. What was happening really was
that the Shenandoah Valley was becoming an extension of
Pennsylvania.
The settlers naturally enough made Lancaster their chief
trading point, so that there came back continually reports of
what was going on in the new country; stories, too, of its
fertility as well as of its beauty. One strong recommendation
was the cheapness of the land. You could get it from six
to seven pounds cheaper per hundred acres than in Penn-
sylvania.
J:ust when John Lincoln began to yield to the call of
Virginia, we do not know. All we know is that in June of
1768 he bought 6oo acres of land a few miles north of the
present town of Harrisonburg, in Rockingham County, then
Augusta. He is set down in this deed as a citizen of the
County of Augusta and the Colony of Virginia, which must
mean that he had been on the ground some time before he
made the actual purchase of the farm.
The deed says, too, that he bought houses and orchards
and what it calls "commodities, hereditaments and appurte-
nances"-whatever they may be. That is, John Lincoln had a
house into which to move his family when he reached the
Shenandoah Valley.
In the fall of 1922, Dr. J. W. Wayland of Harrisonburg,
the chief authority on the history of the Shenandoah Valley,
conducted me over the land. It lies perhaps twelve miles
from Harrisonburg, along a well-known tributary of the Shen-
andoah, Linville Creek. It gives one a high respect for John
Lincoln that he should have selected such a noble tract of
[46]
"VIRGINIA JOHN"
land. It rolls up from the creek valley, wide and high, looks
westward to the Alleghenies, eastward to the Blue Ridge.
The value to-day, without buildings, is probably $120,000.
At the time that he bought this property there were prob-
ably three to four persons in what is now Rocking-
ham County, of whom possibly eight hundred were taxable.
Among them were a few negroes. Dr. Wayland, who has
studied the records of the county to better effect than any-
body else, claims that probably few of the taxpayers had
slaves. I know of no evidence that John Lincoln owned
negroes, though there is a persistent tradition in the Valley
that he was a slave holder.
Whether John Lincoln had slaves or not, it is certain that
he could have used them with profit. He had 6oo acres of
land, much of which he had to clear. Then, too, undoubtedly
his chief crop, and his legal tender, was tobacco, for prices
were nearly all at this time reckoned in pounds of tobacco.
Tithes were paid in tobacco. Merchandise was exchanged
for tobacco. The salary of the clerk of the court was paid in
tobacco. In 1779 the jailer of the county was paid "2790
pounds of tobacco at 5 a 100 wt. for committing and re-
leasing of the tories" -a little item that shows that sentiment
in the Valley was not all going one way!
When the Lincolns arrived in the Valley there was already
a good beginning for orderly living-a court of justice, a few
churches, an occasional school. As important as anything to
the social and political life, as well as the industrial, was Felix
Gilbert's general store, some twelve miles from where John
had settled. The general store in those days was a real com-
munity center. You bought few luxuries at Felix Gilbert's-
saws, augurs, nails, gimlets were the chief purchases of the
men; knitting needles, flannel, linen, thread (by weight)
of the women. .You paid for what you bought by trade
[47]
chiefly, oftenest of course tobacco--sometimes by labor, reap
ing, sewing, weaving; if you owned a slave, by his labor.
While buying and selling was the excuse for Felix Gil
bert's store, its real importance was the fact that it was the
social and political headquarters of the neighborhood.
Thus, life in the Valley when John and
Rebecca Lincoln settled there was not the isolated affair that
many imagine. Living in closely congested districts as we
do to-day, able to reach in hours points that took the Lin-
coins . days-able to talk on a minute's notice with friends
often a thousand miles away-it takes both imagination and
information to judge of their life. The nearest of their
neighbors may have been a dozen miles off, and the roads at
certain seasons almost impassable; but that did not mean that
John and Rebecca did not see many people. Colonial agents,
agents of the great land schemes of the time, came and went.
Men of science came and went. Peddlers with wares, and,
most frequently, missionaries. Whole families arrived for
visits-often came unheralded, staying for days, and always
welcome.
With these visitors the settlers many and serious
things. The women told one another their housekeeping de-
vices, exchanged recipes and remedies, talked in lowered
tones of childbearing in the wilderness, of accidents and
death. The men discussed their needs-schools, roads, and
always-men and women-wrangled over the interpretation
of the scriptures, and the creeds and practices of the curious
sects that surrounded them.
As the months went on, local and religious discussion
gave way more and more to political. Not long after John
Lincoln settled in the Shenandoah Valley, the community
was knit-and also divided-by the experiences of the
Colonies with England. More and more, indignation was
[48]
"VIRGINIA JOHN"
stirred by the tales that reached them of interference with
what they conceived to be their rights. They were not men
to be tampered with; they were deeply conscious of what they
had done. It was they who had opened the land, stood off
the Indians, and who had never-men or women-shown
themselves afraid of any danger-. wild beasts, Red Men, in
credible hardships. They had been forerunners, breakers
away. Their experiences had made them free speaking, reso-
lute, tenacious of what they conceived to be justice. They
had none of the traditions, none of the loyalties of men of
conventional association. England must show herself fair-
let them have a voice in what concerned them, or they would
not tolerate her government. They would submit to no taxes
about which they had not been consulted, and so when Boston
revolted and held her famous Tea Pal'ty, the settlers down
John Lincoln's way took up a collection at the general store-
a collection of wheat. I do not find John's name in the list
of those who contributed, though no doubt he did his share,
for we do know that when the time came Rockingham County
was quick to organize its militia and that one of John's sons
-the one who interests us most-was a leader in that or
ganization. But that story belongs to our next chapter.
It is probable that we would know more of John Lincoln's
activities in the Revolutionary period if it had not been for
the Civil War. In the summer of 1864, when the Federal
army, advancing up the Valley, approached Harrisonburg,
the county seat, certain of the citizens, fearful lest the court
records be destroyed, loaded a great quantity of them into a
wagon and started for the mountains. A detachment of
Federal troops, meeting them, seized the wagon and set fire
to its contents. Later, when it was discovered that it was
nothing but records that were being carried off, the fire was
stifled with green hay, and the partly burned papers collected
[49]
and sent back to the county seat. Great damage had been
done, however. Many of the papers were entirely destroyed,
and others so badly scorched that it has been only by years
of patient and tedious effort that they have been restored.
What information about John Lincoln and his family
went up in smoke in that panic-quite understandable, but,
as it turned out, foolish-we shall never know. If it had
not been for a quarrel between two of his children over the
administration of the property he left, we would not have
even the date of his death-November, 1788, for although the
family burying .ground in which he undoubtedly lies is care-
fully protected on the slope of one of his fine fields, looking
out on the Alleghenies, no headstone was ever put to his or
Rebecca's grave. His son Jacob lies there with other of his
descendants, their graves well marked, but there is nothing
to show where John lies.
John Lincoln's will, saved to us by the quarrels of his
children, proves him a devout man. "Principally and first of
all," its opening clause reads, "I give and recommend my
soul into the hands of God that gave it." The will shows
him a careful man, doing his best to provide for his "dearly
beloved wife Rebecca" and to recognize all his nine children
in the division of what he calls "such worldly estate where-
with it has pleased God to bless me in this life."
It was no great thing by this time, for he had been using
both his land and his money to help his children start in life.
Four hundred acres of his original 6oo had gone in 1773 to
his sons Abraham and Isaac-evidently sums of money had
been distributed to others, but what remained he divided
meticulously. The legacies of money are particularly in-
teresting: "To my son Abraham the sum of five shillings"
(Abraham was now in Kentucky and unhappily never to
know of the bequest, since he was killed by Indians before his
[5o]
"VIRGINIA JOHN"
father's death); two shillings and 14 pence each to "my
daughters Hanna and Lydia and my sons Isaac and Jacob."
A careful and unequal will which requires more "inside infor-
mation" to explain than we shall ever have.
Of the children recognized by John Lincoln the one to
become most prosperous was Jacob. To Jacob the homestead
finally went and here, about 18oo, he built a large and digni-
fied house, from bricks made on the place. A little later
Jacob's son Abraham enlarged this house and had made for
it some fine old mahogany pieces, which are still owned by
descendants in the Valley. The homestead itself passed out
of the Lincoln family only a few years ago.
What we have then from a study of the records concern-
ing John Lincoln, the great-grandfather of President Lincoln,
records scattered through three states-New Jersey, Penn-
sylvania and Virginia-crabbed, ill-spelled, dry, and, in the
case of Virginia, scorched, proves that this great-grandfather
of Abraham Lincoln was a man of courage, energy, fidelity.
He must have been a tolerant and a level-headed man, too,
to have lived on peaceful terms with so many varieties of
mststent sectarians. To live among the freakish without be-
coming freakish or contemptuous takes both character and
brains.
A man is also judged by the children he leaves behind him.
John Lincoln founded a line in the Shenandoah Valley that
has carried on to this day, as his father did in Pennsylvania
and his grandfather and great-grandfather in Massachusetts.
It makes one catch his breath to go 150 years after John and
Rebecca settled on Linville Creek into a pleasant home,
twelve miles away, and be introduced to a three-year-old
Abraham Lincoln, to look into the faces of Lincoln men with
the pronounced features made so dear and so familiar to us
r ~ 1 J
by our acquaintance with the face of Abraham Lincoln; but
that is the experience that one has to-day in the Shenandoah
Valley. John Lincoln stamped himself into that country
and lives there through those that have come after him.
PoRTRAITS oF ABRAHAM LixcoLN AND His SECOND CousiN, D.wm LixcoLN, OF THE
VIRGINIA BRANCH OF THE FAMILY, SHOWING STRIKING RESEMBL\XCE IN FEATURES
HOUSE BUILT ON LINVILLE CREEK OF THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY, VA., IN 1800 BY }ACOB
LINCOLN, GREAT-UNCLE oF ABRAH ..ut LixcoLN, oN L.-\ND BoucHT IN
1768 BY "VIRGINIA JoHN" LixcoLx. ]-\COB's F.-\THER
v
THE CALL OF KENTUCKY
I
T is unusual to start the story of a man's life with his _mar-
riage license, but, as things have stood in the genealogy of
Abraham Lincoln's family, the first certain date that we have
had concerning his grandfather was that on which he took out
a license to be married. Waldo Lincoln's "History of the
Lincoln Family" published this year-1923-gives us an
earlier start-the date of his birth. In the extensive re-
searches for his book Mr. Lincoln found in Ohio an undoubt-
edly authentic "Memorandum of the Births of the sons &
daughters of John Lincoln & Rebecca his wife." This tells
us that the first child, a boy named Abraham, was born May
13, 17 44 " (old stile)." In the next 23 years Rebecca bore
eight more children, four boys and four girls, but it is with
her first hom that we are concerned.
We can say with certainty that his birthplace was either
Lancaster or Berks County, Pennsylvania, where his father
John l!ad lived from the time he left New Jersey until he
settled in the Shenandoah Valley. It meant much to be born
in that part of the world, around the middle of the eighteenth
century, for it was a land teeming with people of different
nations-English, Scotch, Irish, Germans, Dutch. It was
highway for north and south and east and west travel-a
home in which industries and arts were taking root, and in
which all sorts of ideas, political and religious, sound and
freakish, were seething. Schools were rapidly building up,
and it is certain that young Abraham Lincoln had a better
chance of schooling than his father had had.
[53]
When John Lincoln yielded to the migratory spirit and
pulled up stakes in Pennsylvania and moved southward into
the Shenandoah Valley, Abraham was 24 years old-old
enough to take a full part in that serious-and dangerous-
task. The Indians, allied with the French in their war on
the English, had for several years made life risky for the
scattered settlers and travelers in Pennsylvania. The air
was filled with rumors, true and false. Refugees continually
sought safety in the large towns like Reading and Lancaster
and defense parties went out to help those who stayed at home
get in their crops. Those who followed the great route south
in 1768 kept a watchful eye against surprise by marauding
bands.
When the Shenandoah Valley was reached and the family
settled in the new home, there was plenty of opportunity for
work for him. He no doubt knew something of all the trades.
Probably, like his father and great-great-grandfather, he could
handle a loom; like his grandfather and great-grand-
father he was something of a blacksmith. The settler
had to be a little of everything, and undoubtedly young
Abraham Lincoln could turn his hand to any one of a
multitude of tasks that arise in a family situated as was
theirs.
A marriage license that he took out in 1770 argues that
he immediately improved the social opportunities of the Val-
ley, for his bride was, it is now believed though not proved,
Bathsheba Herring, the daughter of one of the first families
of Rockingham County.
There is a possibility, though I have come to the con-
elusion that it is not a probability, that Bathsheba was his
second wife. Until some fourteen years ago her name was
unknown to Lincoln genealogists; the grandmother of Presi-
dent Lincoln, the wife of his grandfather Abraham, was sup-
[54]
posed to have been a North Carolina girl, Mary Shipley,
whom he had found on a visit to the Y adkin region, where
his friends and relatives, the Boones, lived. J. Henry Lea,
one of the most important to date of Lincoln genealogists, be-
lieved that Mary Shipley was a first wife, though it was he
who proved that, whether this was true or not, he certainly did
marry a Bathsheba, believed to be a Herring.
According to the members of the Herring family still
living in the Shenandoah Valley, as reported by one of them
to Mr. Lea, in 1908, "Abraham Lincoln, who married Bath-
sheba Herring Was a poor and rather plain man. Her aristo-
cratic father looked with scorn on the alliance and gave his
daughter the choice of giving up her lover or being dis-
inherited. The high-spirited young woman did not hesitate.
She married the man she loved and went with him to the
savage wilds of Kentucky in 1782. Her husband was after-
wards killed by an Indian, and one of her sons, a lad of 12
years, killed the Indian, avenging his father's death. Bath-
sheba Herring was a woman of fine intelligence and strong
character. She was greatly loved and respected by all who
knew her."
"Poor and plain" though Abraham Lincoln may have
been, he seems to have been able promptly to establish him-
self in the Valley. Three years after the license was taken
out his father, John Lincoln, deeded to him 210 acres of the
6oo he bought when he first came into the country. Five
shillings and "one peppercorn on Lady Day next if the same
shall be lawfully demanded" was the price he paid. To this
land, six years later, he added fifty-two acres adjoining, pay-
ing for the same the sum of 500 in the depreciated currency
of the colony equal to about $6o.
But he was doing more than growing in property in the
Valley. The dangers from the Indians made a strong militia
[55]
necessary in a remote region like that of the Shenandoah and
when the Lincolns arrived they found the Augusta County
militia a well organized body. Abraham Lincoln soon be-
came a member of this militia, and as early as 1776 was a
captain. At least a part of his company in the summer of
that year took part in an expedition against the Cherokee
Indians. Whether Captain Abraham Lincoln himself com-
manded his troops we do not know, though we do know that
in the year 1776, 1777 and 1778 he served as a judge advo-
cate of the court.
The court was composed of the colonel, lieutenant-colonel,
major and a captain of the county IJlilitia. Charles Kemper,
the present leading authority on the Augusta County records,
tells me that they represented the best element of citizenship
of the county. Among the captains were many whose names
are still well known. That Abraham Lincoln was chosen
from this group to serve on the court shows that he must have
been, if "poor and plain," a man of as good or better educa-
tion than most of the others, and a man, too, that had won the
respect of his fellows. No document that we have concern-
ing him is a better indication of the standing of the President's
grandfather than t i ~ from the court militia records of Au-
gusta County.
Whether he saw service in the field in the Revolution,
I do not know, but he was doing his 'part, just as many of
i ~ relations in Massachusetts and in Pennsylvania were do-
ing A first cousin of his, Hananiah Lincoln by name, living
back in Berks County, near Abraham's early home, had been
in the Reading company of Rifles which reported from the
"camp at Cambridge, Mass.," in 177 5 Hananiah became a
lieutenant in the Twelfth Pennsylvania Regiment, but, dis-
gusted because he was not promoted after the battle of
Brandywine, he resigned. He was back again the next year,
[56]
however, and promoted to a captaincy. Up in Massachusetts,
Amos Lincoln, like Abraham a great-great-grandson of Samuel
Lincoln, the first of the family to come to the United States,
had been a member of the Boston Tea Party and afterwards
a captain of artillery.
That there was opportunity for Abraham Lincoln in Rock-
ingham County, the history of the Lincolns who stayed behind
proves. With 26o acres of rich land, and a creditable record
of local service, he might have gone far. His brother Jacob,
who remained in the Valley, certainly did so. But Abraham
Lincoln was like his father John, his grandfather Mordecai.
He had the imagination, the independent and restless spirit
and the daring of the pioneer. He lived, too, in one of the
most irresistible migratory currents that ever ran across this
country, something that had more of the dash and the pull of
California in '49 than anything that we have ever seen. It
was Kentucky that pulled Abraham Lincoln.
Reading the records to-day of the years of suffering, dis-
appointment and murder that the pioneers of that state went
through, it is hard to understand how any man with a young
family and a fair chance would risk everything in a venture
which had cost so many lives, over so long a term
of years. A bloody ground, indeed, it had been, and nobody
knew better than Abraham Lincoln what it had cost, for the
most indefatigable explorer of that territory was his friend
and relative, Daniel Boone.
Abraham Lincoln knew how again and again Boone had
gone into the Kentucky region and returned without the furs
he had taken and on which he was depending to support his
family, and, moreover, without the companions that he had
induced to follow him. But always, whatever his misfortune,
he came with wonderful tales of the promise of this Kentucky
land. Boone and others like him had finally worn the trail
[57]
through the Cumberland Gap, northwestward into Kentucky,
into something like a road-the Wilderness Road. They had
carried on their dangerous work until they actually finally had
won over the Southern Indians, who claimed the central Ken-
tucky country and considered it their fairest hunting grounds,
to give them an enormous tract between the Kentucky and the
Cumberland rivers.
It was a vicious contract they made with the Indians-
a cabin full of paltry English goods for thousands upon
thousands of acres of the best of Kentucky's lands. To
handle this great tract they formed a company known as the
Transylvania, and hastened to establish settlements there, in
the meantime advertising their undertaking far and wide.
The Transylvania Company had no sanction from any
Colonial government. Indeed North Carolina and Virginia
called them a band of land pirates, pointing out that they
were violating the king's express orders to let the Western
lands alone. It did not disturb the promoters, nor did it
deter settlers. It was a great chance. You could go to
Transylvania and with a compass and chain lay off as much
or as little land as you chose. All you needed to do was to
pay the land office fees that were required by the company.
That the adventurers who came to obtain lands paid no at-
tention to one another's surveys, that they lapped and over-
lapped seems at the moment to have gone unnoticed. Tran-
sylvania was one of the first of those magnificent land schemes
that even to-day fascinate American speculators and are the
easiest of baits for American investors.
This undertaking was short-lived. The Revolution had
led the British to attempt a backfire against the Colonies.
They officered the Indian tribes and set them on brutal raids,
into Pennsylvania, the Shenandoah Valley, and particularly
into Kentl!_cky. Again and again the settlements which had
[58]
been formed in Kentucky were raided. No man, woman or
child was safe; yet, in spite of . the dangers, the settlers in-
creased. Finally, in 1780, Virginia took the matter in hand,
establishing her own hind offices. She began about this year
also to improve the Wilderness Road, the only half-safe en-
trance at that time into the country, the Ohio River being
practically in the hands of the Indians and the British.
It looks as if it may have been the action of Virginia that
suddenly decided Abraham Lincoln to try his fortunes there,
for although late in 1779 he had added to his Virginia farm,
he sold out his entire holdings of 2 so acres early in 1780, and
in May of that year entered 400 acres of land in Jefferson
County, about twelve miles east of the present city of Louis-
ville on a fork of what is known as Floyd's Creek. A few
days later, June 7, he entered 8oo acres, just below the Green
River.
It is probable that before he went back to the Shenandoah
Valley he began to clear one or the other of these tracts in
preparation for a home for his family.
The next year, 1781, Abraham Lincoln was back in Vir-
ginia settling up affairs. Bathsheba, his wife, had been ill;
so that the deed for the farm he had sold before he went to
Kentucky had not been properly recorded. Indeed it was
necessary for the Rockingham court to send "gentlemen" to
examine Bathsheba as to whether she was willing to relinquish
her right of dower to the land. As the records show they went
and came back to declare "the 24th day of September 1 781"
that "she freely & voluntarily relinquished the same with-
out the. Force threats or Compulsion of her said husband."
It was in 1782, if the best tradition is to be believed, that
Abraham Lincoln set out for Kentucky with his wife and
little family of probably four children-Mordecai, Josiah,
Mary, and Thomas.
[59]
Of course, they did not start over the Wilderness Road
alone. No family ventured on that dangerous trip without
many companions. There is a tradition among the Herrings
of the Shenandoah Valley that one of Bathsheba's brothers,
with a large family, "went West" in 1782. It is not improb-
able then that they were with her. It is fairly certain, too,
that one of the party was Captain Hananiah Lincoln, a cousin
of Abraham. In 1776 when he resigned from the army after
the battle of Brandywine, he visited Daniel Boone in North
Carolina, and I am inclined to think that he was the Lincoln
for whom Boone entered land iQ. that year. At all events,
his name begins to appear in Kentucky records soon after
1782.
It was not difficult for the Lincoln party to make its way
to the beginning of the Wilderness Road, a point known as
the Block House, in the northeastern corner of Tennessee.
Here the custom was for the travelers to wait until enough
guns were gathered-a gun in their parlance being an armed
man-to make a fair guard. They waited, too, until word
came back from the settlements along the way that the In
dians were comparatively quiet. They knew well enough-
these hardy people-that whatever the reports, there would
never be an hour that there would not be danger of attack.
Without this fear, the journey was hard enough, particularly
with women and children to protect. There were numberless
rivers to be crossed-easy enough if the water was low, but
difficult indeed if there was a freshet. There were moun
tains to be climbed, long marshes to be traversed.
But, endless as the difficulties were, the extraordinary
beauty and interest of the country-its great forests, the
thrill of adventure, the promise of future wealth and com
fort, the realization that they, who were taking their lives
in their hands, were doing something for the future, some
[6o]
thing big and important-all of this carried them through
whatever they may have had to encounter from day to day.
Then, too, to cope with danger and hardship was the habit
of their lives. They were schooled to it. If they knew its
terrors and sorrows, they knew also its joys and its hopes.
What happened to the Lincoln party in its journey of
something over 200 miles from the Block House to the central
Kentucky stations, we do not know. We do not even know
what time of year they made their journey, nor when they
arrived. Were the Lincolns at Bryan's Station in August of
1782 when a great number of Indians from the North sud-
denly surrounded the little group'? And was Bathsheba one
of that courageous body of women, who, knowing that they
had not water in the stockade sufficient to stand a siege,
boldly went out with pails on their heads, laughing and talk-
ing as if there were not an Indian within miles, filled their
pails and came back before the watching eyes of the savages
in the forest'? Or had they reached Harrodsburg'? And
were Abraham and Hananiah Lincoln in the company of
Captain John Todd who, when the rumors of what had hap-
pened at Bryan's Station reached him, quickly collected 150
or more "guns" and attacked the besieging Indians, with
terrible results to both sides'? These things we do not know;
but we can be certain that all the facts of these horrors and
many others of the terrible year of 1 782 were familiar enough
to the Lincolns, and that little Mordecai, Josiah and even
Thomas then began to learn something of what Indian war-
fare meant. We can be sure, too, that Bathsheba Lincoln,
living in the midst of constant alarms and threats, must many
a time have gathered a child to her bosom, ready to fly; many
a time have loaded her husband's rifle as he shot through loop
holes at prowling Indians; possibly even herself aimed the
rifle.
[61]
At least four years, and possibly six, after he led his
family over the Wilderness Road, Abraham Lincoln fought
to protect wife and children and labored to make them a
home. We have only the meagerest details of what he did.
We do know that he continued buying land on treasury war-
rants, principally along the Green River. The Rev. Lewis A.
Warren of Kentucky, who has followed the Lincolns through
the state with more intelligent patience than any other recent
investigator, says that he has found evidence that Abraham
Lincoln took up over 2,ooo acres on the Green River. All
this doubtless meant frequent trips away from his family.
We do know that in the fall of 1784 the tract of 8oo acres
he bought on his first trip into Kentucky in 1780 was surveyed
for him, and that in May of 178 5 the 400 acres near Louis-
ville were surveyed, he acting as marker and his cousin
Hananiah and his son Josiah as chain carriers. The probability
is that in the summer of that year he took his family to a
stockade called Hughes Station, known to have been near his
tract. Few people in Kentucky at that time lived outside
of the stockades, and those that did were usually within easy
reach of some kind of garrison.
Desperate things had happened in the neighborhood of
Abraham Lincoln's land, hut he, like so many of the settlers,
was impatient of danger. It was hard to keep the restless
pioneer inside the stockade whatever the possible danger with-
out. He could not resist the desire, as well as the necessity,
of up his tract, and thus it was that one day, while he
was working on his clearing, an Indian dashed from the woods
and killed him.
His three little boys, Mordecai, now about 14, John, 12,
and Thomas, 8, were with him at the time. The two older
escaped to the stockade. Mordecai seized a gun and shot the
Indian, who was off their little brother. The exact
[62]
spot of this tragedy has never been satisfactorily settled. In
the last two years, however, there has been an investigation
carried on by members of the Filson Club of Louisville to fix
by documentary evidence the exact boundaries of Abraham
Lincoln's tract and its relation to Hughes Station. The tract
has been laid off and its history since it was entered by Abra-
ham Lincoln worked out. Personally, I am inclined to be-
lieve that these careful investigators will soon be able to
prove that Hughes Station was close to the line of the Lincoln
tract and close to the cabin which Abraham Lincoln was
building. The site of a cabin long known in the neighborhood
as the "Lincoln Cabin" and of a spring known as "Lincoln's
Spring" have been determined. There are unmistakable re-
mains of the chimney on the cabin site, and if one will dig
a bit, as I did recently, in the ground about he will turn up
bits of yellow crockery with the well-known lines of yellow,
brown and blue. There is little doubt that here Abraham
Lincoln was building his home.
But even a more interesting deduction from the investi-
gations of the Filson Club is that not over 400 feet away, and
just beyond the Lincoln spring, are the unmistakable ruins,
if we may use the word of chink and chimney stones, of a
structure fully 100 feet square, with an open court within.
It seems reasonable to believe that here was the Hughes
Station in which Abraham Lincoln and his family were living
at the time of his death.
But what became of Abraham's body'? Perhaps a quarter
of a mile away from the site of the Lincoln cabin and the
possible site of the stockade, at the end of a high tongue of
land, lying between two tributaries of Long Run Creek and
overlooking the valley of that stream and on to the hills be-
yond, stands a famous old church, surrounded by an ancient
graveyard, the Long Run Baptist meeting house, dating back
[63]
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE UNCOLNS
to 1797. The land of the church and the burial ground oc-
cupies a comer of Abraham Lincoln's 400 acres.
Was he the first, or one of the first, to lie in the ancient
ground'? So far as I know, it was not until two or three years
ago that the question of where he was buried was ever raised.
Close to the stockade-they would not have dared to take his
body further-men have said, and they let it go at that. But
two or three years ago the Filson Club was questioned and
an investigation was started with the result that a local tra-
dition to the effect that Lincoln's grandfather was buried in
the old graveyard was unearthed.
Old people of the locality told of hearing their grand-
parents say of this or that early settler that he was "keeping
company with old man Linkom in the Long Run burying
ground." A tradition so widespread and persistent could
not be disregarded, and the more one studies the old yard and
its head stones and its relation to the Lincoln home, the more
probable it seems that the tradition is correct and that in one
of the long sunken graves, marked, if at all, by rude pieces of
uncut native red sandstone, Abraham Lincoln's body was laid
away.
"Why not open these old unmarked graves'?" was my in-
stant question, as I went about the yard. But a wise old
trapper and explorer of the region scoffed at the query.
"They wrapped him up in a deer skin or a blanket-he had no
coffin; his remains are long ago turned to dust. You would
find nothing." That may be true. And yet one cannot but
wonder if Bathsheba or young Mordecai or one of their
friends might not have buried with Abraham Lincoln some
mark of identification-a stone, a bit of metal, even a
weapon on which his name was scratched'? It was the
practice of the times to put rude markers everywhere. I
can scarcely believe that there would not have been put with
[64]
the body of this man something to identify it. At least the
possibility is sufficient to justify a thorough search. But,
whether identified or not, the probability is that this an-
cient graveyard of the Long Run Baptist Church in Jefferson
County, Kentucky, is the resting place of the grandfather of
Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States.
[65]
VI
THE YOUTH OF THOMAS LINCOLN
. 'E'OR a hundred and fifty years the Lincoln family had
r been in the vanguard which was opening the new con-
tinent. Their migration from New England to New Jersey,
New Jersey to Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania to Virginia, Vir-
ginia to Kentucky, marked as it had been by hardship and
perils, had been made without tragedy. But when Abraham,
the grandfather of the President, while at work on his clear-
ing, near Louisville, was killed by an Indian, the irreparable
pioneer tragedy took place-the death of the head of a family
where the children were still young.
Bathsheba Lincoln must have asked herself, again and
again as she bent over the dead body of her husband, what
was to become of her and of her children. There were five
of them now-three boys and two girls-the oldest, Mordecai,
not over fourteen. True, she had upwards of 3,000 acres of
land, but, even if the Indians had not been so threatening,
her boys were too young to finish the cabin that Abraham
Lincoln was building when he was killed, and to carry on the
clearing and cultivation of the 400-acre tract which they had
chosen for their home.
Fortunately for Bathsheba Lincoln, she had friends, not
a few of them, about forty miles to the south in what is now
washington County-families that had come into Kentucky
either with her or near the time that she did. Most important
to her no doubt at this sorrowful moment was her husband's
cousin, Capt. Hananiah Lincoln. He had become a man of
[66]
considerable importance in the country by this time. There
is an entry in the Washington County records of one tract
of between eight and nine thousand acres in Hananiah's name.
He bought and sold tracts, too, in other parts of the country,
and he had sufficiently established himself in the respect of
the community for the court to appoint him a captain of
militia in the First Battalion. In the record of this appoint
ment, to be seen in the Bardstown Court House, he is recog
nized as "gent." That is, Bathsheba had a man of parts,
related to her husband, to befriend her. Then, too, we must
remember that the pioneers turned, as a matter of course, to
help those in trouble. The orphan was "passed around," as
the phrase was, and the labor on the widow's land was divided
among the kindly disposed. Bathsheba found many friendly
hands stretched out to her when she reached Washington
County; and from that time to her death she continued to
live there, her name appearing regularly on the tax lists
up to 1793.
This fact and the fact that the inventory and appraisal
of Abraham Lincoln's personal property are in the Court
House of Bardstown, Kentucky (then the county seat of
Washington County), have convinced many people that the
Lincoln family had always lived there and that Abraham, Sr.,
was killed there. More than one of the first families in that
region has in the later years made affidavit that this has always
been the tradition of their people. One interesting affidavit
even goes so far as to describe with great particularity
Abraham's powder horn!
In my judgment, there must be better evidence than we
yet have to upset the belief that Abraham Lincoln met his
death in Jefferson, not Washington County, and that, after
. this loss, his widow came with her children to the little group
of friends and acquaintances near Springfield. Certain it is
[67]
that it was in the first, not the second, place that he owned
land.
Washington County has a fine group of Lincoln traditions
to develop without this, much as she wants it and feels it is
rightfully hers, for here certainly Bathsheba and her family
came to live. And what did she have to live The
inventory referred to above shows that she had two horses,
three cows-two yearlings and three calves. She had a few
farm implements-a plow, hoes, some tools, guns and rifles.
More interesting is what she had for the inside of her house.
It is comforting to know that she had "three feather beds
and furniture," which certainly meant bedsteads, and, let us
hope, dressers. She had a dozen pewter plates and two pewter
dishes, a candlestick, a Dutch oven, a small kettle and two
big cales or tubs. And, most important, she had her flax
wheel. Enough, you see, to set up housekeeping with, in a
one-room log cabin, which was all that she or many other
people in Kentucky, even in good-sized towns, had at that
moment. Bardstown, where this inventory was filed, was
then but a log stockade, though since that day it has become
one of the most finished small towns in the United States.
In this cabin Bathsheba must bring up her What
was the life of little Thomas, now eight years old-the one
of her children in whom we are particularly interested'? It
has been common to speak of his life after his father was
killed by the Indians as that of a wandering orphan boy-
his son once thus described it; but it seems to me certain that
up to 1793 at least, possibly longer, Thomas had the care
of a mother, a well-hom woman, more or less attention from
his father's cousin, a man of parts, set down in the records
as a "gentleman," and at least kindly interest from a group
of families that were to figure in his future history-the
Berrys, the Thompsons, the Hanks. That would include a
[68]
little schooling. People of the training and antecedents of
his mother and of Hananiah Lincoln, of the Berrys and the
Thompsons, always saw to it in those days that after food and
protection were. granted to children, they be taught to read
and to work. It was part of their creed.
There has long been a tradition that Thomas Lincoln
could neither read nor write. We have the documents to
prove that he did sign his name-"bunglingly," to be sure,
as his son has said; but if one will examine the records of
Kentucky at this period, he will find that many a man of
eminent name could do little more than to sign his name
"bunglingly." The writing and spelling of the aristocrats
of those days, if judged by present-day standards, or by the
standards which Abraham Lincoln evidently applied when a
grown man, would prove them almost illiterate. People had
something to do in settling a new country, overrun with wild
beasts and Indians, besides practicing in copy books.
I take it, then, as certain as any deduction that Bathsheba
Lincoln and her friends were giving to the little Lincolns,
the little Berrys and the little Thompsons as good instruction
as they could. Certain it is, too, that they were familiarizing
them with the Bible and the stiff moral code of the day. We
must not forget that most of these people accepted very
definite religious and ethical principles. Puritan, Quaker,
Methodist, Baptist traditions of creed and of conduct regu-
lated the lives of the people among whom Thomas Lincoln
was reared.
Moreover, it was a time of the most earnest discussion
about the future of the country which they were settling.
What should it be'? Should Kentucky be, as the great Tran-
sylvania Land Company had planned, a state by itself'?
Should it yield to England'? Should it join Spain'? Should
it be a state in the Atlantic Colonies, newly joined in the
[6g]
United States'? Not on the terms which many in Virginia
were trying to enforce, that is, a dependency, a colony. If
they went with the United States, they must have inde-
pendent statehood. It was a vigorous struggle, and these
woodsmen were prepared to back it, by force if necessary.
This was the kind of strong political meat that young Thomas
Lincoln was hearing on every side.
Just when his mother died and he was thrown out of a
home we do not know, but probably it was around 1793 We
do know, however, that soon after this he went on what must
have been an exciting journey for him, a trip of some 200
miles into the beautiful Wautauga Valley of Tennessee.
To this country his uncle Isaac had migrated with his
family about 1780. Isaac was a well-to-do man when he left
Virginia, and he had married a well-to-do woman of an im-
portant family, Mary Ward by name. He had prospered on
the Wautauga, acquired lands in various parts of the country,
was a flax grower, a slave holder; a careful man, and "close,"
they say. When his widow died in 1834, she left two finely
equipped plantations and forty-two slaves; that is, when
young Thomas went to visit his uncle Isaac he found a com-
fortable pioneer home. He found his uncle's family, too,
connected with the best of the countryside.
Isaac Lincoln might very well have adopted Thomas, for
his only son had recently died. However, he is said to have
found his nephew lazy. I am inclined to think that this
explanation has grown out of later-day insistence that laziness
was Thomas Lincoln's leading characteristic-an insistence
that documents greatly modify-and that the real reason that
he did not take the boy permanently into his home was that
his wife wanted to adopt children from her own family. At
least, that is what she did, leaving to them when she died
[70]
the greater part of the estate Isaac had left her. No one of
the Lincoln nephews or nieces was remembered by her.
Just how long Thomas stayed in Tennessee I do not know
-probably about a year; but down in the Wautauga Valley
there are people who still claim that it was here he found his
future wife, Nancy Hanks, and lived with her as a common-
law wife, and that it was here that Abraham was born. The
site of a cabin upon the hills above the Wautauga is still
pointed out as that of the Lincoln cabin. But this is one of
the traditions that documents riddle. There are records to
show that Thomas Lincoln was back in Washington County
by 1797. Moreover, there are many to prove that from that
time on he remained in Kentucky until he left the state for
Indiana in 1816.
When he returned, it was no doubt at first to the home of
his older brother, Mordecai. In 1797 Mordecai sold the 400
acres near Louisville, where his father had been killed, and
for 1 oo bought of Sarah Thompson, one of the neighbors
with whom the family had always been associated, a tract of
300 acres on Beech Fork, Washington County, near the newly
formed town of Springfield. A few years later his brother
Josiah bought an adjoining farm.
The farms of the Lincoln boys, Mordecai and Josiah,
bordered on that of Richard Berry, a man whose name is of
importance in the Lincoln story. I think we may set it down
that here on the Beech Fork was the first permanent Lincoln
settlement in Kentucky. It was here that a little later a
cousin of theirs from the Shenandoah Valley, David Lincoln,
a boy then about twenty years of age, found them, and years
later, in 1848, wrote to Abraham Lincoln, then a member of
Congress, telling him of his trip. David no doubt came to
Kentucky to see what the chances were for him there, and we
can take it that he found them less than at home, for he went
[71]
back and later built up a prosperous business on the turn-
pike north of Harrisonburg, Virginia, at a place called Lacey's
Springs, where his descendants are still living.
A visit to this first place in which the young Lincolns
established themselves in Kentucky is worth while if we want
to visualize the spot where Thomas Lincoln, father of the
President, probably spent much time after he was seventeen.
The land lies some eight miles from Springfield, the county
seat. It is a rough and even dangerous ride, ending in a
fording of the Beech Fork, something which, I imagine, could
only be done in the dry season. Along the bank of the stream
comfortable white cottages are strung-Poortown, they call
it. Poortown turns out when a car approaches. They know
the value of the Lincoln connection and eagerly point you out
the site of Mordecai Lincoln's cabin. It was a pleasant site,
looking down a long valley. There is nothing left now of
the cabin, though a fine old mill stone marks the spot on
which it stood. They tell you there, with every proof of
conviction, that here Abraham Lincoln was born; and all
Poortown feels naturally enough that it is wrong indeed that
the noble marble monument that stands in Hardin County,
near Hodgenville, should not be theirs, that they should
not have enjoyed the increase in land values that Hodgenville
has had, and that they should not have the roads that the
Lincoln Memorial has brought to Hardin County.
It was a pleasant and easy path over the hillside from
Mordecai Lincoln's cabin to that of his neighbor, Richard
Berry; and if it is true, as I myself believe, that in this house-
hold of Richard Berry there was living at that time a young
orphan girl called Nancy Hanks, it is easy to see how young
Thomas Lincoln, when making his home with his brother,
might have walked back and forth from the Berry home many
an evening for a sight of her, to take her to church, to camp
[72]
THE YOUTH OF THOM.AS LINCOLN
meetings, to com huskings, "bees," house raisings. There were
many things to bring the pioneers together. It is only ignor-
ance that makes us picture the life of the time in this part of
Kentucky as devoid of social and religious opportunities. It
was full of them. The pioneers were building up a com-
munity. They had brought with them from Virginia and
Pennsylvania a fine body of traditions. They were trying
to work them out, and in every way the school, the church,
the neighborly gathering was fostered.
How much of his time Thomas Lincoln spent in Wash-
ington County with his brother Mordecai is uncertain. He
was young and strong; it was necessary for him to earn his
living. Workers were in great demand. The year round
there was something for every pair of hands in the community.
But Thomas did not want to be a jack-of-all-trades. He
wanted to be a carpenter, a cabinet-maker, and accordingly
apprenticed himself, probably, though not certainly, by 18oo
to one Joseph Hanks of Elizabethtown, some 35 miles in a
direct line west of Mordecai's home.
This Joseph Hanks, in whose shop he now went to learn
a trade, was the son of a Joseph Hanks whose will, properly
probated, shows that he died in 1793, leaving eight children.
Joseph seems to have been a particularly respectable citizen,
hard working, carrying out the pioneer tradition of combining
a trade with a farm. It was a good place for young Thomas
Lincoln to be.
But Thomas had the family thirst for land strongly in his
blood. A trade was not enough for the Lincolns. Run back
over the line that we have been following from Hingham,
Massachusetts, in 1637, down, and you will find them always
adding land to their trades-Samuel a weaver as well as a
landholder-Mordecai I and II blacksmiths and landholders
-John a weaver like his great-grandfather, and a landholder.
[73]
If John's son Abraham had a special trade ~ do not know.
Soldiering and pioneering played so large a part in his career
that he never was able to specialize, but that he was a jack-
of-all-trades, we can be sure. Thomas, true to form, now
specializes as a carpenter. But in 1803, when he was 23
years old, he bought 238 acres of land. He had to pay for
it before its transfer 118.
Where did he get the money to buy this land'? Possibly
he had earned it. Certain, he could have done so if he had
been as diligent as he might. Again, his uncle Isaac might
have helped him a little, though that gentleman's reputation
does not give much foundation to the idea. It is more
probable that by this time his father's estate had been settled,
and that he had received something toward the sum necessary
to pay for the property.
The fact that Mordecai had a few years before bought
the farm in Washington County, of which we have already
spoken, and Josiah was a little later to buy a piece of property
adjoining Mordecai's, seems to show there had been some
division of whatever was realized on the 2,000 and more acres
of land which Abraham Lincoln, Sr., had bought in Kentucky
in the early 1780's.
The location of the land which Thomas Lincoln bought
in 1803 has only recently been settled. That indefatigable
Lincoln student, the Rev. William E. Barton, started the
search which finally located the tract some twelve miles north
of Elizabethtown on a tributary of Salt River, called Mill
Creek. Possibly the fact that both of his sisters, now married,
lived near here brought Thomas into the neighborhood.
Whether he ever built and lived in a house on his farm,
cleared and sowed and reaped fields, I do not know. It is
probable most of his time was spent in carpentry work in
Elizabethtown.
[74]
Of course carpentering in Elizabethtown does not mean
that he was confining himself to that settlement. In those
days men traveled far for a job, and it is probable that
Thomas Lincoln was working in more than one county at his
trade. Of what he was making out of it, however, we have
no record-enough to marry on, certainly, since on the
1oth day of June, 18o6, he and one of his brother Mordecai's
neighbors, Richard Berry, put their names to a bond for the
"full sum of 50 current money," the condition of which was
that Thomas should "shortly" marry Nancy Hanks, of whom
Thomas' fellow bondsman, Richard Berry, claims in the docu-
ment to be the guardian-and he spells it "garden."
We know that this marriage took place two days later-
the 12th of June, i8o6, at Richard Berry's home, a place
called Beechland, near which, as we have already seen,
Mordecai was living and near which, too, Bathsheba Lincoln
had undoubted! y spent her remaining years after the murder
of her husband. We have the best of proof of this in the
return of the minister who performed the ceremony.
Those whose minds have been confused by the contra-
dictory tales that for years have been told about the father
and mother of Abraham Lincoln, would do well to make a
pilgrimage to Springfield, Washington County, and see there
for themselves the records proving this marriage. You will
find them, not in the court house, but in an office across the
street. You will not have any difficulty finding this marriage
bond and the return by the officiating clergyman, Jesse Head,
for both are now carefully preserved under glass, and when
a carload of sightseers turns up in Springfield, one of the
first things that the clerk in his depository of records does is
to bring out these two framed documents. Would that he
had as strong a sense of the value of other documents!
Careful searchers for exact documentary material about
[75]
the Lincolns in Washington County, have, within recent years,
turned up tax lists which show, among other things, that in
1811 Thomas Lincoln was taxed in this county on "one
horse mare."
There is always a satisfaction in looking on such a record,
although it may have been printed and you may have the
utmost confidence in this printed source, so I asked to see the
tax list. Nobody knew where it was. I think it must have
taken half an hour for the clerk to discover in an upper room
what looked to me like an old lard can, into which had been
thrust a quantity of yellowed papers, printed and written,
. among them the crisp old assessment list of which I was in
search--carelessly folded and stuck into this receptacle. If the
papers had ever had a binding it had disappeared, and natu-
rally, so old are they-at least 111 years--it is almost impos-
sible to handle them without tearing.
Samuel Haycraft, who at this time was clerk of the court
in Elizabethtown, says in his Memoirs that, in the early days
of Hardin County, the records were kept in a big wooden
bread basket. It was a much better receptacle than that in
which Washington County is to-day allowing some of its
precious historical records to lie. Springfield and Washing-
ton Counties are eager to prove their claim to the birthplace
of Abraham Lincoln, but they are making poor progress when
they handle any record touching the Lincoln family carelessly.
But Springfield is by no means the only delinquent in these
matters. In Frankfort, Kentucky, recently, the very tax lists
by which the Rev. William E. Barton has been able to prove
that Bathsheba Lincoln was alive as late as 1793, were, I
have been told, all but burned as waste paper. They had
lain so long untouched that the order had gone out to destroy
them, but a vigilant woman official gave the order that they
were to be examined. To be examined it was necessary to
[76]
take them into the open and to sweep them in the direction of
the wind, so heavy was the accumulation of dust. But to
those who look over old records this is an old story. Only a
few days before this experience in Springfield, I had a similar
one in Virginia-dust so thick on old records that after three
hours' work, nothing but a vacuum cleaner and a Turkish
bath would have made me really dustless.
Carelessly kept records have been one of the difficulties
that Lincoln students have_ had from the start in untangling
the story of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks and their
life in Kentucky. The statement, spread so diligently after
Mr. Lincoln's death, that his father and mother had never
been married took root because not only no indices of the
records in Washington County had ever been made but
because those records had been treated as "old papers" and
stuffed into out-of-the-way places.
Resentment at the scandal which he believed to be f l ~ e
led Squire R. M. Thompson of Springfield, whose mother
claimed to be an own cousin of Nancy Hanks, to undertake
a search for the marriage bond and return which the law
required. The clerk of the court discouraged him, but Squire
Thompson persisted, and finally the papers were found,
scotching forever, for people of decent mind, the tale which
had been repeated with such relish not only by Mr. Lincoln's
political enemies, but as well by envious friends.
It is by patient research like this, carried on persistently
ever since the death of Abraham Lincoln in. 1865, that has
gradually brought together so many scraps of indisputable
evidence concerning his father-now a will, now an inventory
of personal property-a tax receipt, an appointment to some
small post, a deed-that we are able at last to make out of
him a much more decent, industrious and respectable man
than early and more ignorant tradition painted him.
[77]
VII
THE MOTHER OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
W
HO was Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham
Lincoln'? That she was the true and lawful wife of
Thomas Lincoln we have seen. But who was she'? Do we
know her antecedents as we do those of Thomas Lincoln'?
Is it possible to trace the Hanks family, step by step, from
its coming into America as we can the Lincoln family'?
Unfortunately, not with the same completeness and definite
ness. We do know, however, that side by side with the
Lincoln family from the time that they settled in Penn
sylvania there always had been a Hanks. One of Mordecai
Lincoln's nearest neighbors in Berks County, Pennsylvania,
was a John Hanks.
John Hanks was a Quaker, and we have interesting
records in the minutes of the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting
of his difficulty in bringing himself to what he regarded as
"necessary clearness in relation to marriage." His struggle
brings to mind that which his possible, though not proved,
descendant Abraham Lincoln was having about one hundred
years later "in relation to marriage" !
We are fairly certain that John Hanks and his family
joined the migration into the Shenandoah Valley and south
ward about the time that John Lincoln did. We do know
that in various counties of Virginia-Amelia, Bedford,
Lunenburg-there are in the records traces of Hankses. We
find traces of them, too, in North Carolina and South Carolina.
An Abraham Hanks was a member of one of the first parties
[78]
that went over the trail called the Wilderness Road-not a
man who carried on to the end, however, for the entertaining
journalist of the trip, after telling of the various troubles
that Abraham had had with his dog. and his horse, recounts
that he became frightened at the stories .of hostile Indians
ahead, and went back. Later, however, members of the Hanks
family went into Kentucky, but, so far, the documentary
evidence of what they did between their arrival and the time
of Nancy Hanks' marriage is very meager. So far as we
know they were all, like the Lincolns, of small means. More
than one biographer, not having discovered any members of
the family that owned lordly acres or built big houses, has
dismissed them as "poor whites" just as more than one biog-
rapher has dismissed the Lincolns as belonging to that class.
But what is a "poor white"'? Poor whites are the back-
wash, not the vanguard of the pioneer army. In every onward
movement into the wilderness there were those who, through
bodily weakness, fear, discouragement, misfortune, dropped
by the way. They were like soldiers, wounded or gassed in
the front line trench beyond any future hope of active service.
Without them the pioneer army could not have advanced as
it did. They were part of the sacrifice that opening the
new continent demanded.
To those who through weakness or misfortune fell back,
there were joined, particularly in the mountain regions of
Tennessee and Kentucky, a group of convicts and pirates,
chased from the south Atlantic settlements-people who went
to the mountains for a reason, and stayed. '
Now, the Lincolns and Hankses were of neither class.
They moved ahead into the very heart of the Kentucky battle
ground, and there planted themselves and withstood the perils
and hardships of the early period. Moreover, as we shall
see, the Hankses, like the Lincolns, kept the pioneer spirit.
[79]
They pushed ahead with the vanguard which went later into
Indiana and Illinois. They were never laggards behind, that
is, they never were of the "poor white" class.
,But where does Nancy Hanks belong in the group of
Hanks families that certainly came into Kentucky about the
same time as the Lincolns '? Is there anything in the records
of the counties where they settled that places them beyond
dispute as the Lincolns we are following from Massa-
chusetts westward are placed'? Until twenty-five years ago
there was nothing. Then a document of first order was found
-a will, drawn in 1793 by one Joseph Hanks, who at that
time owned property and was living with his family in Nelson
County. This will had been signed, sealed and delivered
in the presence of men whose names are familiar in the
development of that part of the state, friends and neighbors
of Joseph. '
This discovery, so surprising to Lincoln students, was
made by Mrs. Caroline Hanks Hitchcock, now of Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Mrs. Hitchcock had undertaken some time
before this to collect material for a genealogy of her family
in America. In her search through the records of different
states where branches were known to .have settled, she came
of course to Kentucky, and in the court house at Bardstown
found this important paper-the first time, so far as I know,
that any student had looked upon it. Visitors to Bardstown
to-day, interested in Lincoln genealogy, will do well to look
it up, and at the same time to ask for that other interesting
document of which I have already spoken, the inventory of
the personal estate of Abraham Lincoln, Sr.
Joseph Hanks, in this will that Mrs. Hitchcock found,
recognized eight children, by leaving each a legacy-a horse
to each of the five boys, a "Heifer Yearling" to each of the
three daughters. To one of his sons, Joseph, he left the farm
[So]
of 150 acres in Nelson County on which he was living at
the time of his death, which leads us to suppose that he may
already have given land to his older sons, as was the practice
in well regulated families of that day. The estate, however,
was not to be disturbed as long as his wife, whom he
ately calls N annie, lived.
As soon as Mrs. Hitchcock found a Nancy Hanks recog
nized in this will-the "Heifer Yearling" Joseph left her
was called "Peidy" !-her natural question was: May it not
be that this is the Nancy Hanks who in 1806 married Thomas
Lincoln and became the mother of Abraham Lincoln'? She
might very well have been old enough at the time. Was there
another Nancy Hanks recognized anywhere in Kentucky
records'? She could find none of a proper age, nor has any one
else found one of proper age. Then the question which Mrs.
Hitchcock naturally asked herself was whether the descendants
of any of the men or women that Joseph mentioned in the
will ever had any association with Nancy Hanks Lincoln,
whether there were any of these descendants that claimed her
as sister or aunt or great-aunt.
By following the family of Joseph Hanks, the son to
whom the father had left a hundred and fifty acres when the
mother should be through with it, Mrs. Hitchcock secured
considerable convincing testimony of the relationship she was
trying to establish. This Joseph Hanks we have already met
in an earlier chapter, for he was the carpenter and cabinet-
. maker of Elizabethtown with whom Thomas Lincoln is
believed to have learned his trade. These two men lived
side by side for several years, both working at carpentry and
cabinetmaking in the same district and doubtless often on
the same jobs. Joseph married in Elizabethtown, so the
marriage records say, a Mary Young, and several of his
children were born there. About 1826 he took his family to
[81]
Illinois, settling in Adams County, near Quincy, on the
Mississippi River; and here his children grew up, married,
and scattered, in the way of families, into various parts of
the country.
Mrs. Hitchcock had no trouble in locating these descend-
ants of Joseph Hanks, and from them she was able to secure
a number of letters giving their reminiscences of their father
or grandfather as the case might be. All of these letters
claim definitely that Joseph and Nancy Hanks were brother
and sister. One of them tells of hearing Joseph Hanks talk
of Nancy herself, of her sweetness and gentleness; another
recalls things that he told of Thomas Lincoln and the life
of the two together in Elizabethtown.. Fragments from these
letters Mrs. Hitchcock published in 18gg. with a facsimile of
the will she had found.
An interesting confirmation of the truth of Mrs. Hitch-
cock's theory that the Nancy of Joseph Hanks' will was the
Nancy who married Thomas Lincoln, came to me unsolicited
over twenty-five years ago, from a daughter-in-law of Joseph
Hanks, Mrs. Jacob V. Hanks, and her son, J. M. Hanks,
at that time superintendent of the public schools of Fremont
County, Colorado. Both Mr. Hanks and his mother (an
Adams-her father a cousin of John Quincy Adams, Presi-
dent of the United States) were people of education and
character. Mr. Hanks helped Mrs. Hitchcock in collecting
data for her proposed genealogy. I have before me a letter
of his, written after Mrs. Hitchcock's book had come out, in
which he rejoices that she has "cleared up and set right," as
he puts it, the story of his kinswoman, the mother of Abraham
Lincoln.
Did President Lincoln know anything about the relation-
ship of his mother to Joseph Hanks and his sons and
daughters'? He certainly did, for in the first brief notes
[82]
which in 18 58 his friends were able to wrest from him for a
campaign biography, he made this statement: "My mother,
who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of
Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, some others in
Macon Counties, Illinois." As we have seen, the Hankses in
Adams County were Joseph Hanks and his family. Mr.
Lincoln, whenever he was in Quincy, went out to see "Uncle
Joe," as he called him, and one can be sure, as his grand-
children have. reported, that the two men often talked to-
gether not only of early days in Elizabethtown when his
father was starting out in the world, but still more of Nancy,
his mother, who had left him in his tenth year, but whose
memory seems always to have remained with him-something
tender and precious.
As to Macon County, the Hankses there were none other
than the family of William, the oldest of the sons, the executor
of Joseph Hanks' will. William Hanks came into Illinois
about the time that his brother Joseph did, settling near the
present town of Decatur. Although his son John is better
known to Lincoln biographers than William, the records
show him to have been an important man in the new settle-
ment. As a matter of fact, William Hanks and Jesse Fell
once owned a part of the land on which the town of Decatur
stands. That Mr. Lincoln had familiar relations with the
Macon County Hanks family is well known.
Now here is a natural, simple chain of evidence; but
reasonable as it is it must go if a stronger and completer
chain is produced. I have seen none so far, though that tire-
less Lincoln investigator, the Reverend William E. Barton,
has recently announced that he has found in a remote section
of Kentucky evidence completely shattering the conclusion
that Mrs. Hitchcock drew from the Joseph Hanks will and
the corroborating testimony. If I understand Mr. Barton's
[83]
claim it upholds a theory of Mr. Lincoln's mother's origin
which was broadcasted after his death by a man who had
been associated with him as a friend and a law partner for
twenty years, Mr. William H. Herndon.
Almost immediately after the tragedy of the President's
assassination, Mr. Herndon began gathering material for a
life of his old friend. Among other things he set o w ~ and
begin to repeat as early as 1866, his recollections of a con-
versation which he said he had had with Mr. Lincoln in the
early fifties.
It was an affecting tale that Mr. Herndon told, of how,
in a moment of deep depression, Mr. Lincoln had confided to
him that his mother was the illegitimate daughter of a Virginia
planter by a woman called Lucy Hanks. It was from this
Virginia planter, Mr. Herndon said, that Mr. Lincoln believed
that he had inherited his "power of analysis, his mental
activity, his ambition." Of course at the time of the reputed
conversation neither of the two men knew that it was un-
necessary for Mr. Lincoln to seek an explanation of his
superiority so far afield, that, as a matter of fact, he had it
in his father's family, members of which at that date were
filling important positions in the public and professional life
of the East.
Mr. Herndon seems to have realized that if his version
of a confidence, given fifteen years before and long before
he could have had any idea of writing Mr. Lincoln's life,
was to be accepted, he must have some kind of backing. He
sought it from one Dennis Hanks, then living in Coles County,
Illinois.
This Dennis Hanks called himself a cousin of Nancy,
and he was, by his own statement, "base born." Dennis
always talked as if he and Nancy had been children together,
in spite of the fact that she was some sixteen years older
[84]
and that he was only seven when she was married. However,
he had been associated long with the Lincolns, for he followed
them after Thomas Lincoln moved into Indiana in 1816, and
remained with them until they moved on into Illinois fourteen
years later.
A more picturesque and entertaining story-teller could not
have been found than Dennis Hanks, and his satisfaction in
having a fresh audience in Mr. Herndon is evident in all the
testimony of which we have notes, either in his or in Mr.
Herndon's hand. He delighted in remembering things as
long as anybody would listen to him, and his own opinion of
the value of his recollections was magnificent.
"William," he wrote in one of his communications, "let
in, don't keep anything back, for I am in for the whole hog
sure; for I know nobody can do any for you much, for all
they know is from me at last. Everything you see is from
my notes-this you can tell yourself."
Unhappily for the picturesqueness of my page, the spell-
ing of this note was revised before publication. Dennis's
spelling, as I will show a little later, was of the earliest
pioneer type.
Dennis Hanks seems to have agreed w t ~ Mr. Herndon
that Lincoln's mother was a Lucy Hanks. Whether he ever
said definitely or not that Nancy was born out of wedlock
I cannot make out from the notes that have been published.
If he did, he was quick to take it back, for as early as
February, 1866, he wrote Mr. Herndon:
"Hir N arne was Nancy Sparrow; hir fathers N arne was
Henry Sparrow, hir Mother was Lucy Sparrow, hir Maclin
name was Hanks, sister to my Mother. 2nd. You say why
was she called Hanks'?
"All I can say is this She was Deep in Stalk of the Hanks
family. Calling hir Hanks probily is My fait. I allways
[85]
told hir She Looked More Like the Hankes than Sparrow."
(Remember, Dennis was but seven when Nancy was married!)
"I think this is the way; if you call hir Hanks you Make
hir a Base born Child which not trew."
This statement, so flatly contradicting Mr. Herndon's
theory of illegitimacy, naturally irritated him. He besieged
Dennis with written questions, but received in return answers
which only still more confused the issue. Little wonder that
when Ward Lamon came to use Mr. Herndon's notes for a
Life of Lincoln, which he published in 1872, he said of
Dennis that he was "painfully weak on cross-examination."
One other witness that Mr. Herndon called in was John
Hanks of Macon County-a solid citizen, John Hanks, and
of much soberer' mind than Dennis. He backed up Dennis,
however. "Nancy Sparrow," he wrote Mr. Herndon in 1865,
"was the mother of Abraham Lincoln, her mother's name was
Lucy Hanks, was born in Virginia." It is interesting to note
that sons of Dennis and of John later worked out the
genealogy and made Nancy Hanks a sister of William Hanks,
as Mrs. Hitchcock makes her.
Mr. Herndon rested his case on his belated recollections
and on the testimony of Dennis and John Hanks; and when
his own Life of Lincoln was finally published in 1890 he
repeated, in a more detailed form of course, the above theory
of Nancy Hanks' origin.
Personally, I have never believed that Mr. Herndon would
have accepted and insisted on the story if it had not been
that at the time he set it down, and for long after, his
mind was confused and weakened by alcoholism. A brilliant,
lovable, undisciplined person, with all the defects, as well
as the qualities of a radical mind and temperament, excessive
drinking injured his powers. When he gave up his practice
finally in Springfield, it was with the despairing cry: "I can't
[86]
see-I can't hear-I'm going to quit." If it had not been
for the faithful and intelligent cooperation of Jesse w.
Weik, we would not have the valuable Herndon life of
Abraham Lincoln.
Familiar as I have been for years with Mr. Herndon's
theory of the origin of Nancy Hanks, I have never been more
convinced of the flimsiness of the testimony on which it is
based than I have been in reviewing it in the pilgrimage
which I have been making for these chapters. One cannot do
much historical and biographical work without learning that
the memory of man, when it comes to exact details, is pain-
fully unreliable. A conversation is rarely repeated twice alike.
With no malice, with no intent to deceive, men distort the
thing which has been told them twenty-four hours before,
and with every day and month that passes, if they repeat
the tale, this distortion grows and changes. I do not believe
that Mr. Herndon knew exactly what Lincoln told him in
the conversation which he describes. As for Dennis Hanks,
I do not understand how he can be taken as a serious witness
in matters of genealogy. Let any one of us try to set down
without documents the names of families into which relatives
have married, the dates of births and deaths, and we quickly
find, unless we have a taste for genealogy which we have
steadily cultivated, that we fall into all sorts of errors.
However grateful we may be to Dennis for the color and
liveliness which he has contributed to an important segment
of the Lincoln story, a segment of which he knew much, he
cannot be taken seriously as a genealogist. If he and Mr.
Herndon are right we must have documents to prove it. If I
understand Mr. Barton's announcement he believes that he
has them. We owe much to Mr. Barton-how much I had
not realized fully until I began to follow again the Lincoln
trail, seeking what had been added to our knowledge in the
[87]
twenty-five years since I first took it. If now, Mr. Barton
can establish beyond dispute the place of Nancy Hanks in
her family he will have relieved future Lincoln biographers
of much bewilderment and disgust-but his chain must be
faultless.
What is needed to settle finally this unpleasant discussion
is a thorough and complete genealogy of the Hanks family.
The records of Virginia, North and South Carolina, through
which they certainly passed, have never been thoroughly
ransacked. No more have the records of Kentucky, of
Indiana and Illinois. You establish a family line, not by
word of mouth, but by piecing together a multitude of items,
hidden away in the records of the counties through which
branches of the family have passed. It is in tax lists, deeds,
wills, returns of marriages and deaths, the testimony brought
out in lawsuits, church records, tombstones-all of the minute
facts which men have agreed to save in order to fix definitely
who and what we are, what we did, where we came from,
and when we left it all. These are the things which must
be found and fitted together before we can finally answer
with absolute sureness the question: Who was Nancy Hanks,
mother of Abraham Lincoln'?
We have the trail. It lies close beside that of the Lincolns
from the Atlantic coast; but, while we can put our feet into
the Lincoln tracks, from Massachusetts to Illinois, we must
guess those tracks in the case of the Hanks family. That
finally they will be found, I firmly believe. These things
come slowly. In 1858 Abraham Lincoln wrote in regard to
the Pennsylvania Lincolns that the effort to connect them
with the New England family of the same name had been
a failure; yet about twenty-five years later, through the efforts
of a patient student, the connection was made. One after
another unsettled points in the genealogy of the Lincoln
[88]
family have been cleared up. Not a decade passes that some
thing is not added; and there is no reason why a persistent,
intelligent, scientific effort to establish the Hanks genealogy
should not be as successful as it has been in the case of the
Lin coins.
One thing is certain, no such discussion as this disturbed
the peace of the marriage of Nancy Hanks and Thomas
Lincoln. That marriage on June 12, 18o6, at Beechland,
Washington County, Kentucky, was a gay affair, with a great
dinner and friends and neighbors from far and wide. The
ceremony was performed by one of the best known clergymen
of that part of Kentucky in that day, Jesse Head, whose
marriage returns, to be seen in the Springfield court house,
report the wedding he had celebrated.
Traditions of Nancy Hanks have come down in many
a family represented at that wedding-in the family of
Richard Berry, who sets himself down on the bond as her
guardian-in the family of the Thompsons, the Mitchells, the
Shipleys. Now here do you find more indignant denial of a
reflection on the character and origin of the girl than in these,
for years leading families of Washington County.
They picture her as vivacious, spirited, beautiful; they
tell of her skill in handicraft-spinning, weaving, all the
household arts of the day. She was an orphan, for her mother
died soon after her father, and she was obliged to pay her
way in the families where she lived as in the Berry family,
but she was a w e ~ o m e guest wherever she went, industrious,
cheerful, competent. Such, we have every reason to believe,
was the woman that Thomas Lincoln had taken to be his wife.
[8g]
VIII
ABRAHAM LINCOLN's BIRTHPLACE
S
OON after this wedding and the jolly infare or celebra-
tion which followed it, attended by the whole countryside,
the young couple set up housekeeping . in Elizabethtown,
twenty-five miles to the west, where Thomas Lincoln had his
carpenter shop, and some twelve miles from which lay the
238 acres of land he had bought-and paid for-in 1803.
A recent Lincoln biographer describes Elizabethtown
when Thomas took his wife there as a "poor new village,
made up of groups of log cabins, huddled along a few
neglected lanes, with muddy streams instead of streets during
rains, a stench of pig styes at the back"; its inhabitants, he
intimates, were "a shiftless, unstable class."
I should like to hear what Major Benjamin Helm would
say about that. Four years before Thomas brought Nancy
to Elizabethtown, Major Helm had built there a two story
brick house, 50 by 2 5 feet, its walls 18 inches thick, its lower
rooms wainscoted in black walnut, its mantelpieces of walnut.
In the gable was a huge date mark:
BEN HELM
1802.
It would be entertaining, too, to hear what the people
of Elizabethtown at that day would say about this descrip-
tion, for at that moment all Elizabethtown was excited over
their new court house, just finished-this, too, of brick, made
[go]
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S BIRTHPLACE
in the local brick yard. Great things went on in that court
house, for here were growing up some of the most important
of Kentucky's lawyers, men like Ben Hardin, William P.
Duvall,_ John Pope.
Besides, Elizabethtown had already begun to set up
the machinery of an intelligent, accomplished society. She
not only had her churches and schools, held wherever they
could get a roof, but she had a debating society and a dancing
master-who was also the town tailor !
It is true, of course, that the majority of the people like
Thomas and Nancy lived in log cabins, but log cabins which
were rapidly being enlarged and improved. That is E-town,
as it is often called, an energetic, growing pioneer settle-
ment, not a backwash as the writer above quoted would have
us believe. Tom and Nancy fitted into the life of the town,
poor people, to be sure, but honest working people. There
is no doubt that Thomas Lincoln was having his share of the
carpentry and cabinet making that the rapidly growing town
furnished.
He had need to work for, in February of 1807, Nancy
gave him a daughter-Sarah, she was called-a name
frequently appearing in past generations of the Lincoln.
family. A wonderful event, the birth of a child in a pioneer
home!
When little Sarah was about eighteen months old, Thomas
decided to move to Hodgens' Mill, or Hodgenville, as it is
now called, twelve miles away, an energetic settlement and
a rival of Elizabethtown. Good families had settled about
-the Brownfields, the Creals, the Enlows.
This move of Thomas Lincoln's from Elizabethtown has
often been cited as a proof of shiftlessness. It does not
necessarily mean anything of the kind. A working man in
those days went-as he does now-to the point where he
[91]
thought he could get the steadiest and best paying job, and
then, as now, he took his family with him; and in these
changes, made to better his situation, it was no sign of shift-
lessness that he rented a home, as Thomas did, at the start.
By the fall of 1808 he had settled two and a half miles south
of Hodgenville on a small farm furnished with the typical
cabin of the period.
In this cabin on the twelfth of February the year after
he moved, 18og, a boy was born to Nancy-a glad hour for
her. But what a solemn and amazing hour it would have
been if she could have known that a hundred years later
thousands of mothers looking at new-born sons would pray
that they might grow up to be such a man as this son of
hers was to be. They do it-do it in Kentucky to-day.
One day a year ago while on a pilgrimage through the
Lincoln country of Kentucky I stopped in a little town thirty
five miles from the cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born.
It was one of those little towns that disputes with Hodgen-
ville the honor of being Lincoln's birthplace. Like Homer
in Greece, Lincoln in Kentucky is claimed by, if not seven,
at least several different places. Seeking information, I
knocked at an open door, and when there was no answer
entered, and there on a big bed in a darkened room lay a
woman. Alarmed lest I had startled her, I hastened to apolo-
gize. "Look!" she said, and threw back the covers. There
lay the round red head of a two days' old baby! And then,
like all the people in this part of the world, she began to
question me. "Where do you come from'?" "What are
you doing here'?" I told her I was following the traces of
the Lincolns. "Oh !" she said, "prove he was born here. I
want my son to have been born near him. Maybe then he
would grow to be like him."
No doubt Nancy Lincoln dreamed as all mothers do of
[92]
a great future for her son. But she could not have dreamed
anything so wonderful as this.
Childbirth for the pioneer man, as well as the pioneer
woman, was an anxious event. There were few doctors. The
woman must depend upon what the French call the "wise
woman," we the midwife. And usually the wise woman was
not called until the last moment. Thus it was that we find
Thomas Lincoln one morning early in February hurrying
down the road, and meeting one of his neighbors, Abraham
Enlow by name, telling him of his difficulty, and Enlow
answering, as any kind neighbor would then or now, "You
go back and stay with Mrs. Lincoln and I will get the granny
woman." (Several versions of this incident have been
reported; I simply paraphrase what they all amount to.)
There was no lack of friendly help when the neighbors
learned what was about to happen in the Lincoln cabin. More
than one of the descendants of the families then living near-by
has set down what he had been told by father or grand-
father, and more than one has boasted that his aunt or his
grandmother hastened to Mrs. Lincoln's side; and in the days
after, when she was convalescing, went back again and again
to take care of the cabin, cook food for Thomas, wash the
baby, and comfort the mother. Everybody lends a hand when
a new baby comes in a pioneer community, as they do indeed
whenever there is unusual trouble or unusual joy.
Abraham Enlow, who had befriended Thomas at the start,
used to boast years later that it was because of his neighborli-
ness at this time that Thomas's new son was called Abraham.
But here, as we know, Mr. Enlow was mistaken. Thomas
Lincoln named his son after his father, whom he, a boy of
eight, had seen killed by an Indian. As a matter of fact,
there had not been a generation of Lincolns without an
Abraham since Mordecai Lincoln, late in the seventeenth cen-
[93]
tury, married Sarah Jones, daughter of Abraham Jones, of
Hull, Massachusetts, and brought the good old Biblical name
into the Lincoln family.
Unhappily, nearly sixty years after the birth of little
Abraham, this story of Abraham Enlow's relation to his birth
was falsely and maliciously distorted. Men came to the
neighborhood asking, "Who was Lincoln'? What do you
know of his family'?" And embittered political opponents
answered with a leer, "Abraham Enlow must know some-
thing about him. He was named after him." And thus, by
a process with which every one is familiar, slowly, but surely,
a natural, neighborly act in a time of trouble was twisted into
a hateful scandal. Abraham Lincoln's father, so the tale ran,
was not Thomas Lincoln, but Abraham Enlow. This distor-
tion was so evid.ent and so malicious that only the fact that
it is widespread would justify even this slight reference.
There are few more precious birthplaces on this earth
than this where Abraham Lincoln first saw the light. Cer-
tainly in all our United States but one other is equally sacred.
It is a deep satisfaction to know that at last the spot is honored
as it should be. For many years men talked of its sacredness,
but they were less energetic than men who realized that the
cabin particularly might be made a money-maker. It was
the money-makers who first laid hands on the Lincoln cabin.
It was tom down, dragged about the country, and shown in
settings so vulgar and inappropriate that it was made to seem
almost a ridiculous thing. Finally, when the exploitation was
no longer profitable, the cabin was stored in a cellar on
Long Island, New York.
The very land on which the cabin had stood finally came
into the market, and it was then that a group of men, led
by Richard Lloyd Jones, the present editor-in-chief and pub-
lisher of the Perry-Lloyd-Jones Newspapers, who had long
[94]
dreamed of a monument at Lincoln's birthplace, formed the
Lincoln Farm Association, and undertook to collect from the
people of the United States the money to acquire the property
and to rear upon it a suitable monument. That it oe a popu
lar undertaking, they asked that no sum greater than twenty-
five dollars be contributed, and welcomed even more gladly
a subscription of twenty-five cents. Eighty-one thousand
people enrolled themselves in the Lincoln Farm Association.
Three hundred thousand dollars was collected, over $2oo,ooo
of which came in twenty-five-cent pieces. The finest talent
of the country was secured to plan the memorial and its
setting, and on September 4, 1916, the work was done and
a great concourse of people gathered at the dedication of
what Mark Twain once called "The little model farm that
raised a man."
It was not until October of 1922 that I saw the completed
work. I dreaded to see it, for when I learned that it had
been decided to build upon the farm a Greek temple, I shrank
from the idea of the connection. I did not know what should
be done, but in my ignorance it seemed to me that they were
doing what should not be done.
You approach the monument by a winding driveway, on
each side of which the natural growth of the land has been
left, all the beautiful and varied growths of this part of
Kentucky. A place of gorgeous color in the clear sunlight
of a perfect October morning. My first visit was on one of
the loveliest of October days.
The little temple stands on a rising slope of ground-
exquisitely white, small, serene-approached by a long, broad,
generous stairway of marble. It is a triumph of perfection.
Its proportions are right, its size is right. The landscape
gardening simply protects the drive, the staircase, the temple
[95]
itself from the encroachment of the woods, leaving the natural
setting undisturbed. It is a joyful thing to see.
But in the of finding it so beautiful, I dreaded
an entrance. Would not the little cabin seem Would
not its placing inside this perfect thing make it ridiculous by

The beauty and the wonder of it is that it is not so. It
somehow belongs. Why, I do not know; but it stands there
so simply what it is-a thing without pretension, but of an
extraordinary dignity in its simplicity. You have only the
native log structure, the clay chimney; but every stone of the
chimney, every timber of the cabin is there because it was.
needed. Never have I been so impressed with the dignity of
the thing which fits the need.
In these surroundings, one visualizes with wonderful
sympathy and clearness the little Lincoln family in their one
room home. This cabin sat on a rising slope, with the same
lovely surroundings that you may see to-day-trees of every
kind, vines underbrush, fruit. Nancy and her children on the
doorstep at eventime looked out on as beautiful a place as
heart could wish.
The life that Nancy Hanks with her children led in this
cabin was in all its details the same life that she was to lead
up to her death. Here on her hillside farm there were none
even of the simple excitements that she may have enjoyed
in E-town. She was more alone here, though she had
neighbors at no great distance. But her life was like that
of them all, and in many of its details like the life of the
. Lincolns who first came to this country, Samuel and his wife
Martha in Hingham, Massachusetts, in the middle of the
seventeenth century.
Here, as there, the fireplace of the cabin was the very
heart of the place. Nancy's fireplace, as we see it to-day,
[g6]
l\1EMORIAL AT ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S BIRTHPLACE NEAR .HODGENSVILLE, KY., DEDICATED IN 1916
The original cabin stands within the Temple
was deep and wide, with a long stone mantel and big
hearthstone. The chimney was outside-a cat-and-clay
chimney, as it was called, made by mixing cut straw or grass
with stiff clay and laying it in alternate layers with split
lathes of hard wood. Within, hooks were fitted and the long
crane from which to suspend pots.
The feeding of the fireplace was one of the essential tasks
of a pioneer home. And it was one of the tasks that later
was to fall to the baby that now lay in Nancy's arms. He
was to learn that a wood pile was only one degree less im-
portant to the life of the home than the cupboard. He was
to learn to gather for the fireplace for months before winter
set in, as Nancy did for her larder. There must be logs as
long as the opening, of a half dozen different sizes; they must
be green and dry, hard and soft, and there must be chips to
kindle a low fire, brush to make a blaze. He was to learn
that a fire must never go out after cold sets in. And he was
to master all the ceremonials of the fireplace-putting on the
back log, packing the coals at night, stirring them in the
. morning, and choosing just the right wood for quick heat.
The baby Abraham was to learn all this, and to learn-who
ever better'?-the joys of the fireside, and how it might light
one on the way to
Nancy was not troubled at her fireplace with a multiplicity
of cooking utensils like a housewife of to-day. Her chief
reliance was the Dutch oven, a big iron pot with a cover,
standing on long legs and kept continuously on the coals.
After the Dutch oven, the most important article was her
long-handled frying pan. On this she roasted the game with
which the larder of her home was always filled, both in
Kentucky and later in Indiana. Here, too, she fried the salt
pork and bacon which the pioneer always preferred to venison,
rabbit or wild turkey, and, of course, it was on this frying
[97]
pan that she made the hot bread and cakes which went with
the meats. One of the proudest accomplishments of house-
wives at that date was the ability to tum a cake high in the
air at the precise moment it should be turned. It was like
the feat of which skilled cooks so boast-turning an omelet
at the critical instant.
Her bread baking she did in a clay oven-not so good
an oven as that which Thomas's mother had used back in
Virginia, for that was brick, but it was an oven of the same
kind. Nancy had an outside fireplace, too, where in summer
she kept her Dutch oven going, and in the fall tried out lard,
and made soap and prepared the tallow for the candles. All
through the summer, like every pioneer housewife, she
gathered wild berries and dried them. All through the fall
she cut and strung apples and pumpkins to dry. It was a
time of dehydration, as we used to say so importantly during
the war, but there was nothing that we tried to teach then
that Nancy Lincoln did not know and practice. In the fall,
too, she wrapped up in dry leaves or bits of paper apples and
pears to keep for her children's Christmas. I found a little
Kentucky housekeeper of Nancy's type doing this very thing
a year ago.
She was skilled in spinning and weaving, and there were
few days that did not find her at her loom or wheel, or cutting
up and making into garments for Thomas, little Sarah, the
baby Abraham, the Iinsey woolsey she had spun. From her
loom, too, carne woolen blankets in the fine and simple designs
of her time. When she collected by long patience enough
pieces of cotton for a quilt she patched it in some famous
pattern, and as she worked she rocked her baby in the simple
cradle we can well believe Torn Lincoln had made for her.
Every household had one, and probably Nancy's was a better
piece of craftsmanship than many, for, as we shall later see,
[g8]
her husband was no mean cabinetmaker, given his time and
chance.
We can be sure that Nancy Lincoln's working day was
systematic. These early housekeepers followed a strict
schedule, washing on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, baking
on Saturday, church-going on Sunday. She made the best of
her time, and like every self-respecting woman of that day
rarely failed to find time "to rest a spell."
It is rather a shame that the Lincolns did not live long
enough in the cabin on the hillside for little Abraham to have
really tasted its joys, to have discovered the wonderful Cave
Spring, to have explored the tunnel, to have played under
the big oak. He knew nothing, however, of his birthplace
except what his father and mother may have told him. For
before he was four years old, Tom Lincoln had decided to
move. He had found a farm in a near-by valley, not over
eleven miles if you follow the road to Hodgenville and
descend Muldraugh's Hill, though there's a shorter way-
down a hollow, along a creek bottom. No less a person than
Mr. John Barry, the editor of the Rolling Fork Echo of
New Haven, the town that is nearest to the site of Tom
Lincoln's new farm, believes that it was down this creek
bottom that the Lincolns moved. It would be easier, he
claims, than to have descended Muldraugh's Hill, which in
those days-as it certainly is now-was what Mr. Barry
characterizes as a "tough proposition." It is a long and
dangerous winding descent, interesting to us not because of
its difficulties but because at one time Thomas Lincoln was
appointed surveyor of a portion of it. In the document which
is still preserved in Elizabethtown recording this appointment
Muldraugh's is called the Bigg Hill, and it deserves the name.
Perhaps a mile beyond the foot of the Bigg Hill the road
crosses a valley, the valley of Knob Creek, which a few miles
[99]
to the northeast flows into the Rolling Fork River. It was
here where the road crosses the creek in a wide and fertile field
running back between high limestone bluffs that the new home
cabin of the Lincolns stood.
[100]
IX
THE FIRST HOME LINCOLN REMEM'BERED
T
HE place Knob Creek I remember well-but I was
not born there. . . . I was born in Nolin, nearer to
Hodgenville than the Knob Creek place is. My earliest
recollection, however, is of the Knob Creek place." So wrote
Abraham Lincoln in 186o to a Kentuckian who had invited
him to visit "the place of his nativ:ity."
What was it like-this farm that Abraham Lincoln re-
membered-the place where his childhood experiences began to
sink in deeply enough to be held, where consciousness was
born'? I never saw the place until October, 1922, and al-
though I had read many descriptions, examined many photo-
graphs and thought I had visualized it, I . found when on the
ground that it was very different from what I had imagined,
and-to my joy-richer in resources, closer to the tide of
the life of the day.
One should go to the Knob Creek farm from Lincoln's
birthplace, three miles to Hodgenville, then eight miles north-
east, descending into Knob Creek Valley by the long and
perilous Muldraugh's Hill, of which I spoke in the
last chapter. Here you find wide fields, long tongues of level
land, excellent land. One . cannot but applaud the wisdom
of Thomas Lincoln in moving from the rough and only
partially cleared farm where his son was born to these broad
and open fields-the best alfalfa fields in the county, the
neighborhood claims.
The cabin into which the Lincolns moved-a cabin of
[1o1]
the same type as that in which Abraham was born-stood
not far from the bank of the creek, looking down the valley.
Steep limestone bluffs, heavily wooded, rise on every side,
and from them in times of heavy rains pour down streams of
water to swell the creek and its tributaries. Knob Creek
is as temperamental as the weather, and in the spring the
freshets cover the land-an exciting place for children, if
trying for their elders.
In front of the Lincolns' door ran the highway from
Louisvill6 to Nashville-the most important turnpike in that
part of the world and one freely traveled. That is, young
Abraham Lincoln carne to consciousness in a spot where the
world was passing by-a young and eager world, full of ad-
venture-not in a backwash as we used to believe. This must
not be forgotten when we attempt to estimate the influences
molding the little boy.
Pioneers with heavily laden wagons, driving their live
stock, forded the creek close to his doorstep; peddlers came
and stopped, spreading their wares on Nancy Lincoln's floor.
There were local politicians, soldiers returning from the War
of 1812, promoters of alluring land schemes. John Filson,
the first historian of Kentucky, may have found his way along
the road and stopped at the Lincoln cabin. There were mis-
sionaries of every sect, and now and then a scientist. One
of these latter, who knew Thomas Lincoln's cabin on Knob
Creek and never failed to stop when near, was Christopher
Columbus Graham, a man who for years traveled the high-
ways and byways of this part of the world, gathering speci-
mens of the flora and fauna and strata of Kentucky.
Graham had been at Nancy Hanks' wedding in 18o6,
and in his hundredth year set down an account of the affair
along with much picturesque description of the life of the
early Kentucky settlers, centering it all around the Lincolns.
[102]
THE FIRST HOME LINCOLN REMEMBERED
He knew them, that is sure; often sat at their table, and
though his recollections are those of an old, old man, who
prides himself on his memory, they are the record of a trained
observer whose mind remained alert and active to his death
at the age of 101.
What did the child remember of this life'? What do any
of us remember of our first seven years'? A few definite
things which we tell and retell; one or two definite things of
which we never speak; much that is vague, and often painful
-the beginnings of understanding that life is more complex
and mysterious than our elders would have us believe.
In Lincoln's definite recollections of Knob Creek, the one
that has played the biggest part in the stories of his life there
has been that of an exciting adventure which he and a school-
mate a few years older had one day when the creek was run-
ning high. Lincoln fell in. His playmate, Austin Gollaher
by name, by his courage and quick wit saved his life. Lincoln
never forgot it, and as for Austin it became years later his
chief claim to a place in history. It was a real adventure, the
kind of thing that links you with grown-up story-tellers and
forever lifts life a little above the commonplace. He had
almost drowned! He had been saved!
But Abraham and his sister Sarah and Austin had many
more adventures along Knob Creek, for a more varied play-
ground one cannot imagine. Particularly tempting is a deep
pool a little way down the stream where it makes a sharp
bend and is joined by a fork from the hills. The rushing
waters have cut into the deep soil of the fields and through
the limestone rock until you have here banks five or six feet
high. Over them hang old sycamores and elms, and along
the slopes are heavy fringes of willow. The pool is some
twenty feet in diameter, and when the streams were in flood it
must have eddied and boiled in a way to stir children to the
[103]
very bottom. And a dangerous place it would be, too, and
one to which Nancy Lincoln would forbid the youngsters to
go unattended. But when it was low, when you could go
wading without danger or float in your homemade boat-
and I am sure Thomas Lincoln had one tied to one of the over-
hanging sycamores-it must have been a favorite playground
of the children. One resource of the creek is an abundance
of beautifully tinted mussel shells, and one need not doubt
that Abraham and Sarah carried home many a pocketful.
The surrounding bluffs offered as much excitement to the
children as Knob Creek. Lincoln laid the foundation here
of his exceptional fund of wood lore. Trails ran up the steep
sides of the bluffs-you can see one to-day zig-zagging up-
ward from a point near the site of the cabin-which the boy
must often have followed, as it led to his friend Austin's
home. Across this path numbers of small animals ran, and
Lincoln's first knowledge of their tracks, their habits came
here. Here, too, he began to learn the birds, distinguish their
notes, know the ways of snakes, watch for fox and deer.
He was beginning to observe. It may be that Christopher
Columbus Graham, with his talk of stones and flowers and
animals, stirred the boy to attention. If a "great man" like
Dr. Graham noticed such things they must be worth while.
Here on Knob Creek the boy began to learn to work as
well as to play. Certain easy "chores" fell to him as soon
as he was strong enough to do them: filling the wood box,
bringing in the water, weeding the garden, calling his father
from the field, running errands, picking wild berries, quanti-
ties of which grew on the surrounding bluffs, helping gather
the grapes for the wine and jelly which everybody made, pick-
ing up persimmons for beer-a long list of little tasks to
which the pioneer mother trained her child from the start,
much to his future advantage, let it oe said.
[104]
From what we know of the boy's later life, we can set it
down that N a.ncy Lincoln had no hard task in training young
Abraham. He was naturally willing, affectionate, helpful.
In Indiana, when his father was hiring him out to farmers
and neighbors in and around Gentryville, one thing that the
women of the household always noticed was that when he
came in at noon or at night for his meals he of his own accord
filled the water pail, brought in the wood-a kindly, thought-
ful, well-trained boy they set him down to be. Nancy Hanks
must be given her share of credit.
The most exciting and definite incident of Lincoln's labor
life in these years on Knob Creek, he told a group of
visitors once in the White House. I heard the story many
years ago from a man who was present, Dr. J. J. Wright of
Emporia, Kansas. They were talking of the President's life
in Kentucky. "I remember the old home very well," he said.
"Our farm was composed of three fields, which lay in the
valley surrounded by high hills and deep gorges. Sometimes
when there came a big rain in the hills the water would come
down the gorges and spread over the farm. The last thing I
remember of doing there was one Saturday afternoon; the
other boys planted the corn in what we called the 'big field'-
it contained seven acres-and I dropped the pumpkin seed.
I dropped two seeds every other hill and every other row. The
next Sunday morning there came a big rain in the hills; it
did not rain a drop in the valley, but the water, coming down
through the gorges, washed ground, corn, pumpkin seeds and
all clear off the field."
It was here in this Knob Creek that Lincoln made his first
acquaintance with schools. In his own brief records of his
experience, he has not much to say for them, only that before
leaving Kentucky he and his sister "were sent for short
periods, to A, B, C s c h ~ l s the first kept by Zachariah Riney
. [105]
and the second by Caleb Hazel." According to Mr. Barry,
the schoolhouse was two miles up the road- a little log
room about fifteen feet square, with a fireplace at one side.
It was later made the starting point of a comfortable white
frame house. The owners show you the room to-day proudly,
but you would never dream it had once been a log school-
house, so completely has it been clapboarded without, ceiled
and plastered within. It is a good example of the use many
people made of the log buildings they acquired with a piece of
land.
For lack of any particular knowledge of the two school-
masters Lincoln names, it has been the habit of biographers
to treat them as men of little account, men of scant education
and scant contacts with life; I am convinced, however, from
the information concerning the pioneers of this part of the
world which is gradually accumulating, that both Caleb
Hazel and Zachariah Riney were better teachers than they
have been painted. Caleb Hazel, for instance, was by no
means a wanderer. He was a man interested in the develop-
ment of the country, buying and selling land freely. Looking
over the records of Hardin County recently I found his name
repeatedly. Mr. L.A. Warren, who with Mr. Barton has done
so much research in the Kentucky records, says in his little
book on the Lincoln Louisville Loop, a book which Kentucky
tourists should not neglect to take with them, that Caleb
Hazel owned a farm adjoining the Lincolns' and was evi-
dently a friend of the family.
As for Zachariah Riney, Mr. John J. Barry, the editor
of .the Rolling Fork (New Haven) Echo, is sure that he was
a man of considerable cultivation, "a gentleman"-teaching
manners as well as morals. Riney was a Catholic, and there
were many of the Church in that part of the country. The
institutions they had already founded have grown to be
[1o6]
among the show places of this section. One of these early
Catholic settlements, now the famous monastery of GethSem-
ane, was only eight miles from the Lincolns, near New
Haven, their nearest town; another eighteen miles away at
Bardstown. The presence in the neighborhood of these de-
voted and frequently cultivated people, passing back and
forth as they must have done constantly before the Lincoln
cabin, and a man with them, Zachariah Riney, as
one of Abraham's teachers, had its unconscious effect on the
lad. At all events, it is something to be glad of that the more
we know of his two early teachers, the more respectable they
become.
Nancy Lincoln's part in the education the boy was getting
in this period has always been dwelt upon, and rightly. It was
she who, in the winter time by the big fireplace, told the chil-
dren Bible stories and helped them with their lessons. It was
she who, in the summer evenings, sat on the doorstep and
talked over the day-its incidents, the passers-by, what the
peddler said, what the man who gathered flowers and stones
and snake skins said. I think, however, we have been inclined
to underestimate Thomas Lincoln's part in this education.
Largely from lack of knowledge, Tom Lincoln has been
set down as a shiftless, rather no-account person; but the more
information we have about him, the better man we find him to
have been. That he was a man of varied pioneer experience
we know; also his reputation as a great story-teller is firmly
established. What a fund of stories he must have had! He
had seen his own father killed by an Indian. How often he
must have rehearsed the scene. Abraham Lincoln, in one of
the few records that he made of his childhood, says that the
story of his grandfather's death, and of his uncle Mordecai
killing one of the Indians, was the legend more strongly than
all others imprinted upon his mind and memory ..
[107]
Then, too, Thomas Lincoln had many close hand stories
of the Revolution. He had been associated from boyhood in
Kentucky with his father's cousin, Hananiah, a captain in
the war at Lexington and at the Brandywine. And when,
as happened often, other Revolutionary soldiers dropped in
on Captain Hananiah, there must have been famous hours.
Of the Indians and their ways, of wild animals and their
ways, of the Spanish, the Mississippi, the great adventurers
that had traveled Kentucky, Thomas Lincoln could not but
have known a great deal. Here were stories, and he poured
them out to his boy.
Moreover, Thomas Lincoln was a more active and respected
citizen in those days than we have supposed him to be. This
will be soon proved conclusively, I believe, by the publication
of documents that_ have been gathered by the Rev. L. A.
Warren. Some five years ago, Mr. Warren, just out of col-
lege, found himself the pastor of a church at Hodgenville.
Perplexed by the contradictory traditions of Lincoln's birth,
and of the character of Tom Lincoln, he undertook a detailed
documentary study of the Lincolns, of the related families,
and of the environment in which the boy Lincoln grew up.
This work Mr. Warren has carried on in some nine different
counties. He tells me that he has over a hundred separate
items, gathered from court records, all going to prove that
Thomas was an active, respec.ted citizen, that he filled more of-
fices than we have known, that he owned more property and of
more kinds that we have ever known, and that when he had
trouble with his neighbors and it came to suit, he always won
out. That is, Abraham Lincoln, at this time, was . under the
influence of a father who was respected, and at least fairly
hard-working.
That he was a religious man, taking his part in the Baptist
Church, to which he belonged, loyal to its tenets, there seems
[1o8]
to be every reason to believe. It is certain that he owned a
Bible in a day when Bibles were hard to get, and, according
to Christopher Columbus Graham, cost as much as the
spinning w h ~ e l loom, or rifle. That he did his best to bring
up his children in the way that he conceived the Bible taught
they should go, is sure. Church-going was a regular feature
of Abraham Lincoln's early life. The Baptist Church of that
period insisted on the attendance of members, disciplining
those who without cause were absent from the services, irreg-
ular as they probably were around Knob Creek. Nancy and
Thomas would never fail to take their children behind them
on horseback to every service held-any more than Samuel
and Martha Lincoln back in Hingham, Massachusetts, in the
seventeenth century, would have failed to lead their boys and
girls to the Meeting House. They would have been "visited"
had they not done so!
The public matter in which Thomas Lincoln seems to have
been in this period of his life most deeply interested was
slavery. He belonged to a branch of the Baptist Church
which had long been fighting slavery. And he was on friendly
terms with members of that branch of the Methodist Church
that had seceded from the regular church, largely on account
of slavery. To this branch belonged Jesse Head, the man
who had married him to Nancy Hanks, in 1806. Associated
as Jesse Head had been with the Lincoln family, it is quite
believable that he had done his part to influence their opinion
in this matter. Christopher Columbus Graham declares that
they were "just steeped full of notions about t h ~ wrongs of
slavery and the rights of man, as explained by Thomas J effer-
son and Thomas Paine"-notions which, it should be said,
Mr. Graham himself did not share.
It was not only by the church and such friends as
Jesse Head and the leaders of the Rolling Fork Baptist As-
[Iog]
sociation that Thomas Lincoln had been influenced; there was
a big group of citizens of Kentucky that had put up a strong
fight when the state constitution was framed to bring the state
in free. They had failed, but their agitation had not ceased.
In Shelbyville, to the northeast, not very far away from where
Thomas Lincoln's father had attempted to build his home,
and lost his life in the attempt, there was a strong anti-
slavery group publishing a paper. Their agents traveled the
highway, scattering their literature, giving their message to
groups and to individuals. That is, Abraham Lincoln was,
at this period, under direct ;anti-slavery influence, and that
influence centered in his own home. Arguments against the
institution were an incessant matter of discussion with the
strangers who sat at the fireside, or stopped on the road. The
boy listened; asked questions. We have his own word for it,
that often as a child he walked the floor with what were to
him the dark sayings of his elders, trying to understand. The
puzzle of slavery, his father's claim that it contradicted the
precepts of both the Bible and the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, which men held so sacred, began to take root. If
we are to understand the Abraham Lincoln of the future, of
forty or fifty years hence, we must not overlook what Thomas
Lincoln was thinking and saying in these days on Knob Creek.
Something of what he heard lay smoldering in the boy's
subconsciousness. Not a year, from that time on, but some-
thing was added to these first unconscious impressions. He
lived in an anti-slavery atmosphere from his earliest years.
But deeper mysteries than that of slavery were touching
Abraham Lincoln. Birth and death came into the cabin.
What did Thomas Lincoln do with his children when, in
1815, a baby came'? Were they hurried off to a neighbor's,
and told fables when they came back to see a new brother'?
One of the child's unforgettable impressions is the first sight
[110]
of a new-born child. What did little Abraham
Be sure he remembered.
And the baby died. More mystery-more unreason-
and a heaviness of heart that he no more understood than he
understood the joy of the birth-or why his father should
make a box and shut the little one in it-nail down the lid
and they all go to a far-away place and put the box in the
ground and heap dirt upon it.
Nancy and Thomas Lincoln's grief over the death of their
son came at a difficult time, for they were having "land
troubles." The recklessness with which patents were granted
in the old days, the purchases made by private companies
from the Indians in defiance of Colonial claims, the irresponsi-
bility in overlapping surveys, all were coming back to tease
the Kentucky settlers. Thomas Lincoln encountered one of
these tangled situations when he settled on Knob Creek. Just
what his claim to the land in the first place was, by what right
he was there, I have not been able to make out. Those who
seemed to have the best title to the land he occupied claimed
he had no right, and early in 1815 brought a suit for eject-
ment. The court did not sustain them, however. They de-
clared it a false claim and ordered that they pay Thomas
Lincoln the costs.
The experience seems to have been a discouraging one.
It looks as if he might have been certain that in the long run
he could not have held the land. At all events, in the next
year, 1816, he decided, because of his trouble as well as
because of his desire to live in a free state, that he would fol-
low a new tide of immigration flowing by his door. that into
southwestern Indiana.
He had some money, no doubt, for in 1814 he and Nancy
had sold the farm on Mill Creek near Elizabethtown, which
he had bought three years before they married. They had
[111]
received for this land 1 oo pounds. With this and what he
may have accumulated, Tom Lincoln now prepared to do as
his father, his grandfather, and their forbears had been doing
ever since Samuel Lincoln landed in Massachusetts in 1637
-move on in the vanguard of Western settlement.
Like them, he made a preliminary trip, the preparation for
which must have been highly exciting to his children. He
began by building a boat. According to Christopher Colum-
bus Graham, Tom had his own ideas of boats. He thought
they should be high and narrow, for the sake of speed. His
neighbors laughed, but he carried out his notion. Where did
he build his boat'? I should like to think it was in the big
pool down the creek. It was near home-his timber was at
hand, and when the water was high he could easily have
traveled from there the three or four miles to the junction of
Knob Creek with the Rolling Fork, the river he must descend .
on his way to the Ohio and Indiana. We may be sure the
children watched that boat with wonder and delight; watched,
too, when Tom Lincoln loaded it with the produce he had
accumulated-including, so the legends say, at least two
hogshead of whisky! Along with the whisky went skins, no
doubt; roots, too, like "gensang," for which there was always
a market; honey and beeswax, and cloth from Nancy's loom,
and last, his kit of tools-"the best in Washington County,"
his old friend Dr. Graham asserts. And thus equipped, away
he sailed to locate a new home in a new land.
With what anxiety Nancy and Sarah and Abraham must
have watched for his return. Wives and children in pioneer
days in Kentucky were used to these separations. Men went
on long journeys down the Mississippi seeking a market.
They were gone for months prospecting-north into Indiana
and Michigan, west into Missouri. Thomas was doing now
only what his elder brother Josiah had done some years be-
[112]
fore. Josiah had settled not far east of the present city of
Indianapolis. The Boones had, many of them, gone to
Missouri. It was only the settler who had been especially
fortunate that was not restless. Nancy and the children who
waited for Thomas Lincoln did not wonder. He was only
following the way of his world.
[113]
X
TOM LINCOLN SEEKS FREE SOIL
A
FTER Nancy Hanks Lincoln and her children waved
their last farewell to Thomas as he paddled down Knob
Creek on his way to Indiana, they saw no more of him until
weeks later he suddenly walked in. He brought back a fine
story of adventure, thrilling to young Abraham, for he told
them how as he made his way from the mouth of the Salt
River into the Ohio his boat had overturned, and tool chest
and whisky barrels, together with all his produce, had gone
to the bottom. He told them what he had done to rescue
tools and whisky, and how he had then made his way down
the river to a point on the Indiana side, near a little settle-
ment called Troy, where he had stored his goods with an
enterprising settler called Posey. From there he had struck
into the unbroken country and selected, about sixteen miles
northwest of the river, the site of their future home.
I have no doubt that Tom Lincoln painted glowingly the
land he had chosen. He saw it with a pioneer's eyes, cleared,
its fields under cultivation, a home, a shop, stock in comfort
able barns-he saw it better than it is even to-day!
The preparations for the removal to the new home were
quickly made. There was probably a sale of whatever pos-
sessions they had that it would be unwise to attempt to move.
There would be a little of Tom's homemade furniture, a few
head of stock, and the sale would be a species of farewell to
the neighborhood, for which Nancy Hanks would provide a
[114]
dinner assisted by all her near-by friends, Mrs. Caleb Hazel,
the wife of Abraham's school teacher, Austin Gallaher's
mother, and possibly a few women from near the old home
at Hodgenville; such was the way of the pioneer farmer,
as indeed it is the way of the farmer to-day when he "moves
out."
I can scarcely believe that Nancy and Thomas Lincoln
w o ~ l have left the state without a farewell visit to Wash-
ington County, where both of them had spent so much time in
their youth and where they had been married. Thomas's
brother, Mordecai, still lived on his farm near Springfield.
He had become a man of some importance in the county.
There is a tradition that he had even been sent to the Ken
tucky Legislature, though there is no document to prove it;
possibly he was a candidate but defeated. At all events he
was held high by his relatives, his nephew Abraham claiming
that he "had all the brains in the family.'' Then there were
all of Nancy's people, the Berrys, Thompsons and Mitchells.
Surely, they would not have left Kentucky without seeing
them.
The visits and the sale over, then would come the pack
ing. To know how to pack for migration was as much the
business of a pioneer as to know how to build a log cabin or
plant a field. The Lincolns had lived too long on a highway
over which a continual stream of migration was flowing not
to have picked up much of the technique. No doubt their
cavalcade was simple, a covered wagon, stout and roomy,
horses, not less than three, a cow or two, a few hens "to start
with," and, of course, a dog. It was simple, but not mean
as those who, for partisan or other reasons, would have us
believe. Thomas Lincoln might be a poor man, but he had
not been shiftless, and he was not without some means when
he left Kentucky. He was a good carpenter, a trader, a
[115]
farmer; that is, he had the knowledge and experience with
which to make a start in a new land.
The parting, of course, was hard for the boy. It was his
first experience in breaking off friendships, saying good-by for
good and all to a playmate whom he had come to look upon
in the way of children as a part of his life. Before he was
eight years old, little Abraham Lincoln had his first painful
lesson in the transient nature of human relations. It is one
of the hard things that youth has to learn.
The route the Lincolns followed from Knob Creek to the
Ohio is, I find, in dispute in the neighborhood. There are
those like Mr. John Barry, the editor of the Rolling Fork
Echo, who think they went by boat, as Thomas Lincoln had
gone on his reconnoitering trip. Tradition is against h ~
however, and so is probability. It would have been more
difficult and more uncertain than going overland by wagon.
The point they wanted to reach on the Indiana side was
the mouth of what is known as Anderson Creek, near Troy,
where Tom had left his possessions when he first landed. In
a straight line Troy is about seventy-five miles to the north-
west of the Knob Creek home. To get there, they must foi ..
low roads and trails to the Kentucky side of the ferry which
crossed the Ohio from Anderson's Creek. This northwest
route would lead them through Hodgenville, and give them
a chance to see their friends there, and then to Elizabeth-
town, where, of course, they would halt for visits. Here
lived Joseph Hanks with his young family, a man dear to
both Nancy and Thomas, always their friend and the friend
of their boy. The travelers no doubt ~ p u t up" with him, and
frem his home said good-by to those they knew in Elizabeth-
town. Even young Abraham had his friends there, for he
had often gone with his father on his business trips and sat
on a nail keg in the grocery and eaten the lumps of sugar the
[116]
clerk gave him. Years later this clerk, the Hon. J. B. Helm,
grew to be a man of importance in Missouri, and both he and
Mr. Lincoln meeting there in a political campaign recalled
the visits and the sugar. Mr. Lincoln remembered something
else, that this friendly clerk was the first man he knew that
wore "store clothes" all the week !
Leaving Elizabethtown, the Lincolns went no doubt by
their old farm on Mill Creek that Tom Lincoln had sold two
years before, for near here lived his two sisters, both married,
with families. That is, the first period of their journey was
made over roads that they knew and tht!ir stops were at the
homes of relatives and friends; but after that they came into
country new to them, and all the more exciting because new.
It was a beautiful rolling country, with many streams to be
forded, heavily timbered, sparsely settled. The fall was
coming on, and the weather at this season in Kentucky is
dry and warm, a perfect time for following the road. Every
day would be full of exciting incidents for the children, the
cap of them being the making of camp for the night. What-
ever the day's troubles--difficult fords, straying animals,
broken wheels-all is forgotten when the campfire blazes at
the close of day and the bacon begins to sizzle.
It took the Lincolns no less than a week to reach the Ohio
after leaving Elizabethtown. The river at this point makes
a magnificent bend, the water moving as silently and smoothly
as if it were the surface of a lake. What a wonder this first
big water that he had ever seen must have been to the young
traveler. The crossing over landed them at the foot of An-
derson's Creek, a point which in the future was to play a big
part in Abraham's life. Anderson's Creek flows down to the
Ohio between high banks, and there is a long wide fiat at its
mouth which had been found by the river boats to be an ex-
cellent landing place. Here they often tied up for the night,
[117]
and here the settlers of the young town of Troy near-by had
already established a trade in pork and other produce. Here,
too, they had a big wood yard where the river steamers took
on fuel. It was a bustling place when the boats were in, and
it was well for the Lincolns to make acquaintance with it, for
it was to become their future market place.
Although Thomas Lincoln remained no longer at n ~
derson's Creek than was necessary to make preparations for
the trip through the forest to his new land, there are people
living there nowadays who insist that he remained a year, and
show you the house he lived in to prove it. Local historians
who care more for facts than they do for any possible profit
that the community or any individual in it may get from a
Lincoln tradition are irate and emphatic in denying this tale.
They scoff at one property owner who has advertised for sale
in the last year or so the "Anderson Creek home of the Lin-
coins." This is one of those exploitations against which tour-
ists in the Lincoln country must always be on guard. Many a
motor car has stopped in the last two years before this ad-
vertised house, kodaks have snapped and plates have been
marked, "The home of Thomas Lincoln on the Ohio River."
We can be sure there was no delay in getting on. They
had sixteen miles to travel, and the sooner they were at the
end of the journey, the more comfortable would be their
winter. I think one may rightfully envy them that journey,
and will if he has a drop of gypsy blood in his veins, for it
was made through a forest which in its autumnal colors was
a thing of rarest beauty. The country through which they
traveled was not a jungle, as it has often been described.
Southwestern Indiana had long been the home of Indian
tribes and there were cleared spaces left by them. The forests
had been kept largely free of underbrush by occasional prairie
fires; that is, it was a fairly open land; there were trails,
[118]
too, and the beginning of roads. Thomas Lincoln was by no
means the first settler in this part of Indiana. In the records
at Rockport I found entries of land within a few miles of
where he settled made in 1811 ; that is, when the travelers
made their way northwest, they passed within reach of more
than one settler that had preceded them, and no doubt took
pains to call and to pick up whatever information they could
about conditions.
The October glory was still on the trees when the little
party reached the knoll on the land which Thomas had chosen
for them. They could not have known then how really
beautiful a site it was. To-day, with the land cleared so
that one can look over the great valley, see the line of Pigeon
Creek, locate homes of neighbors with whom Abraham was
to grow up, identify point after point connected with his life
here, you get a very genuine respect for Thomas Lincoln's
choice of a site in what was then an unbroken forest. Prob-
ably there was nothing to be seen about them but trees, trees
of great size, many primeval timber: elms, chinquepin oaks,
walnut, maple, birches, sassafras, trees which now were gold
and red and yellow; when the sun sifted through them they
became things of pure color, almost without substance.
Along the stream there were cleared places covered with
crimson sumac and masses of golden rod, wild rose, black
berry vines, an almost impenetrable tangle. Not far away,
too, there was what was called a "deer lick," a salty marsh
to which wild animals came, a precious neighbor to the settler
who must depend upon his gun for his supply of meat.
There was no time now, however, for exploring the coun-
try; a shelter must be ready for winter, and Thomas Lincoln
and his son fell at once to cutting and clearing and preparing
for what was known as a half-face camp. I am pretty sure
that they were not unaided in this work, for settlers were
[119]
already within reach of them, building like Tom Lincoln.
Some of them were no doubt in need of a carpenter,s skill.
That is, from the first Tom had work at his trade, and much
of this work would be done in exchange for help in clearing
and building.
Many mournful pictures have been drawn of this first
shelter of the Lincolns in Indiana, but the half-face camp
was like the sod house of the prairie, the shack of the mining
town, and quite as good as either. The best description of
its making which I have ever seen . is the one given by one of
Mr. Lincoln's friends on the Circuit, Mr. Henry C. Whitney.
It is not improbable that his description was based on talks
which he had with Mr. Lincoln, for the two men frequently
discussed pioneer life and its makeshifts. According to Mr.
Whitney, the first step in establishing a camp was to select a
site on a southern slope where two straight trees stood about
fourteen feet apart east and west. These trees were trimmed
and topped to serve as corner posts for the open front of the
structure. Logs were then cut about fourteen feet in length
sufficient for three sides; they were fastened with wooden pins
to the posts that had been prepared, and laid in log cabin
fashion until the walls reached the proper height. A roof
of small poles interwoven with branches and thatched with
brush and dry grass was built above these three sides. The
openings between logs were then filled with mud. The result
was a warm and tight structure open to the south.
In front of this open face a fireplace was built of stone;
it was big and solid, for the whole comfort of the family
through the winter depended on this fireplace. Quantities of
fuel must be ready to keep it going, big back logs of hard wood,
smaller stuff, branches and boughs for blazes, chips to kindle
quickly. After cold weather set in this fire was not allowed
to go out. It was not only warmth and a place for cooking
[120]
that the fireplace gave, it was protection from wild animals.
There were many of them; indeed, one of the two things that
made an impression deep enough on Abraham Lincoln at this
time for him to have remembered when years later he came
to record his memories of this first year in Indiana was the
number of wild animals!
His second strong impression was of the ax. "This most
useful instrument," so he wrote in 186o, was put into his
hands on their arriving in Indiana and, as he intimates, was
rarely dropped until he was twenty-three!
It was hard work, no doubt, but the boy was young,
strong and large for his age, according to his own account,
and work done for so fine and obvious a purpose as this work
has its compensations. He was helping build a home, and
took pride in his part of the undertaking. As a matter of
fact, I think the boy Lincoln was just discovering that he
might be something of importance, something useful. The
boy's natural pride in being allowed to work with men was
particularly strong in his case.
It was not only building the camp that occupied him and
his father. There was the stem necessity of seeing that there
was food in the larder before the winter; also that there was
a bit of clearing ready for com in the spring. The game that
was on all sides, big and little, was joyfully followed by
Tom Lincoln, always an eager hunter. Deer was killed and
hung to dry. There were wild turkeys, duck, quail, and
there was an occasional bear. The game meant something
more than meat to the Lincolns. It meant skins, and skins
meant not only clothes and covering for them, it meant some-
thing to trade with. There were few settlers of this time
that did not make the trapping and killing of fur-bearing
animals a part of their winter business. Young Abraham
learned to skin and cure, and the walls of the half-face camp
[121]
were probably decorated continuously with a variety of valu
able furs.
The hardships of this first winter have been long dwelt
on, but the compensations have been generally passed by.
The woodman's life has its joys. The forest in its winter
garb is always a beautiful thing. Every morning brings its
enjoyments. The weather itself is a constant interest, shap-
ing as it does the day's work. The devices for meeting the
problems of food and shelter kept the wits awake and the
fingers busy. The Lincolns' first winter was so filled with
tasks .necessary to keep themselves alive, that the spring
would be upon them before they knew it.
The spring in southwestern Indiana is a wonderful thing.
It comes early, usually with great floods of water; with flocks
of birds, big and little; with a riot of flowers followed by
many small fruits. Life became a busy thing for the boy
then. There was prpbably a calf or two to look after and
there was planting, and in the intervals there was work on
the new cabin, for which part at least of the logs had been cut
in the winter. It was a big cabin for the time, eighteen feet
square, with a loft and a huge chimney. It stood near the
camp and on the top of the knoll. The location is marked to-
day by a marble slab, and clear as the country is now, one can
realize how finely it was placed.
To make this cabin habitable within and attractive with
out became Nancy Lincoln's business. The settler's wife in
variably brought with her some root of a favorite flower, a
bulb, a bit of vine to plant by her cabin door, something
to remind her of the home she had left. Nancy Lincoln
planted her vines and in the clearing near-by fruit trees were
soon set out. There are straggling remnants of them still
to be seen on the slope. Between house-building, clearing
and planting, the boy would be busy enough. Then, too,
[122]
they were beginning to make some connections in the neigh-
borhood. Pigeon Creek Valley was filling up. A church had
been organized, though there was no building yet and only
irregular services held in private houses, and there was talk
of a school, though not yet a school. I cannot believe but
that this first year was one of real interest as well as hard
work for the boy.
They were joined in the fall of 1817 by three relatives
from Kentucky, Thomas and Betsy Sparrow, and with them a
cousin of Nancy, Dennis Hanks by name, a boy about ten
years older than Abraham. The coming of these old ac-
quaintances made life more interesting and gave more strong
hands to push the development of the farm. In every way
then the second winter was easier for the Lincolns than the
first. The second summer undoubtedly gave them still fur-
ther hope, for by this time Tom Lincoln had his hands full
of carpentry work. Things would h ~ e gone from now on
increasingly well, I am convinced, if in the fall of 1818, just
about two years after they came into the country, there had
not come to Thomas Lincoln that greatest of blows for the
pioneer, the death of his wife.
The country in which the Lincolns had settled was a roll-
ing, wooded one, as I have said. The wide valleys, threaded
as they were by big and little creeks, were usually deep in
matted vegetation, the accumulation of hundreds of years.
True, an occasional forest fire swept down the vegetation,
but usually its heavy growth simply rotted during the winter.
. The frequent heavy rainfalls filled the streams to overflowing,
soaking the accumulated leaf mold until it was a rank malari-
ous mass. Through the fall heavy fogs frequently lay over
the land; so that the ooison that rose from the valleys was
not taken care of by air and sun. This had its inevitable
effect upon the settlers. Chills and fever, ague, was common.
[123]
When the conditions were particularly bad an intensified
form of malaria resulted, commonly known in southwestern
Indiana as "milk-sick." There was an outbreak of this disease
in the fall of 1818. It attacked more than one of Nancy
Lincoln's neighbors, and she went from one house to another,
helping as she could to take care of the sufferers. Among
them was one of her best friends, a Mrs. Brooner, whose
children lived to tell of her kindness to their mother. Mrs.
Brooner felt sure she was going to die, but Nancy Lincoln
reproved her. "Tut, tut !" she said; "you will soon be well
and strong again. Woman, keep up your courage." Homely,
well-meant comfort, but unavailing. Mrs. Brooner died, but
before her death Nancy Lincoln herself was stricken with the
epidemic. Death followed quickly, so quickly that to the
unprepared family it must have been like the hand of an angry
God laid upon them.
This sudden death of his mother came to young Abraham
Lincoln as an irreparable tragedy. A boy of nine or ten de
pends upon his mother in a very special and intimate way.
It has never occurred to him that life can go on without her,
and then to have her taken almost without warning from the
home makes an unforgettable impression. It certainly did on
Abraham Lincoln. I am inclined to think that the deep
melancholy of his nature was then first stirred into life, that
here he began to question, as we know he did later, the right
ness and goodness of the world in which he found himself.
Death was a peculiarly intimate thing in a home like
that of the Lincolns. The body lay in the cabin where you
ate and slept. You must yourself make all the preparations
for burial, even to building the coffin in which the dead body
was to be laid away. In a hundred ways we protect our
selves from the presence of the dead to-day, but in those
days every detail of the preparation for b"Qrial was under your
[124]
eye. Nothing could be covered up, spared you. Thus to
young Sarah and Abraham this death of their mother was a
more intimate matter than death could be in a more highly
developed home.
The burial of the dead in the pioneer community is
always a matter of general concern. It is a community event,
and it is a part of neighborliness to be present at funeral
services and the grave; but here in a country where sickness
was in every household, where every household was stricken,
where there was no church or minister, all of the usual cere-
mony must be dispensed with. Tom Lincoln and his children
must go practically alone to the burial of Nancy Hanks.
They laid her in a beautiful spot. Perhaps half a mile
from their cabin was a knoll heavily wooded, uncleared, a
spot where probably already a grave or two had been dug.
It was October and the woods 'were in full color, red, yellow,
'brown. Let us hope it was a sunny day, for the heart-broken
little family had little or nothing of that which they felt was
due to the dead to comfort them, no burial service, no sym-
pathetic neighbors. They were alone and forlorn in a stricken
land.
It was many months before the funeral services, which
they felt, as all people of their traditions felt, were necessary,
were held. It was owing to Abraham's efforts that, months
after her burial, a minister held Nancy Lincoln's funeral.
But there is nothing surprising about this. It constantly
happens in remote communities that funeral services are as
long delayed as they were in, the case of Nancy Hanks
Lincoln.
Tom Lincoln and his children would go often to visit her
grave, but they were never able to do more to honor her than
to put up what was common in the world at that time, what
one sees everywhere still in the old graveyards, an uncut
[125]
fragment of red sandstone, no lettering, no date, only this
marker. And so the grave lay for sixty years, when, in 1879,
a friend of her son put a fence about the grave, set up a head
stone and upon it wrote the inscription:
Nancy Hanks Lincoln,
Mother of President Lincoln,
'Died October 5, A. D. 1818,
Aged 35 Years.
Erected by a friend of her
Martyred Son.
I know of no woman's grave in this or any other country
which more deeply-and rightfully so--touches the heart
than that of this simple pioneer woman, the mother of our
greatest American. How worthily and beautifully is the place
marked! The hilltop on which she lies with the group of
little graves which gradually grew around hers has been
turned into a park-not a pretentious park, but a rarely lovely
one. Hundreds of beautiful trees cover the knoll. Between
them one looks out upon the fertile, well-developed valleys,
distant farms-the kind of thing which Thomas and Nancy
Lincoln had in mind when they started overland into the new
country. I think it must be a regret to many people that
generous friends of Nancy Hanks have in recent days insisted
on putting before her grave a pretentious marble monument,
feeling that the modest gravestone first set up does not suf-
ficiently honor her. They are wrong. It is much more
beautiful, more suitable. The park itself, with its outlook
over the wide sweeping country which she gave her life to
help open to the future, is her true monument. I wish they
would take the big stone away!
It was a sad household to which Tom Lincoln and his
children returned after Nancy Hanks' burial, a disease-ridden
[126] .
household, too, for there quickly followed the death of bOth
Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow, leaving the home without a woman,
only the child Sarah, now but eleven years old. Abraham
Lincoln was having at nine his first experience with the deep-
est of sorrows and with all the perplexing problems that sor-
row brings. It was not until a year later that life again took
on something of the old order and peace, and that came from
Tom Lincoln's bringing into the home a second. mother.
[127]
XI
LINCOLN LEARNS FROM LABOR
I
N the meager gallery of Lincoln portraiture there is no
picture of stronger appeal than that of the woman who in
December, 1819, Thomas Lincoln brought back to Indiana
to be a second mother to his children. It is the face of a
brave, patient, enduring woman. Her clear eyes-1 think
they must have been gray-are direct and unwavering with
a look of pain in them, a woman who through a long life of
labor and poverty had held to those things she believed to be
good. Surely Thomas Lincoln must have been more of a
man than he has usually been painted to have won and kept
two women so worthy of respect as Nancy Hanks and Sarah
Bush Johnston, his second wife.
It was a year after Nancy's death that Torn went back
to Kentucky undoubtedly with the idea of proposing mar-
riage to Mrs. J ohllston, whose husband had been dead for
many months. It has always seemed probable to me that he
made a reconnoitering trip; that is, I see no reason why he
should have gone prepared to bring her back.
Thomas Lincoln had known Sarah Bush as a girl in
Elizabethtown; indeed, he is said to have courted her before
he did Nancy Hanks, but as she was only eighteen years old
when he and Nancy were married it seems a bit doubtful.
However, they were friends, and when he came back a
widower and found her husbandless and with three children
it was natural enough that he should seek her. That she did
not hesitate to accept him those nearest to the pair all testify.
[128]
Perhaps the best authority is a nephew of Tom's, Mr. J. L.
Nall.
"Uncle Thomas," he says, "came back to Kentucky after
the death of his first wife, Nancy Hanks, and proposed mar
riage to the Widow Johnston. She told him that she would be
perfectly willing to marry him as she had known him a long
time, and felt that the marriage would be congenial and
happy; but it would be impossible for her even to think of
marrying and leaving the state as she was considerably in
debt. Uncle Thomas told her that need make no difference,
as he had plenty of money, and would take care of her financial
affairs; and when he had ascertained the amount of her in
debtedness and the names of the parties to whom the money
was due, he went around and redeemed all her paper and
presented it to her, and told her, when she showed so much
honor about debts, h ~ ~ ~ s more fully satisfied than ever that
she would make him1' .a good wife. She said as he had dis
played so much generosity in her behalf she was willing to
marry and go with him to Spencer County, Indiana."
I should like to think that Thomas when he had secured
her promise went back to Indiana and told the children some
thing of their new mother and then taking his wagon and
horses went after her, her children, and her household furni-
ture. Think of the days of eagerness and dread for Sarah and
Abraham. Probably the talkative Dennis Hanks did little to
quiet their alarms. Dennis, now about nineteen, was at an
age when his talk on marital affairs was probably anything
but fit for the ears of a boy of ten.
Any misgivings the children may have had about their
new mother faded at the sight of her. Sarah Lincoln was
a vigorous, blooming woman of thirty-one. All the traditions
preserved of her harmonize with the story her portrait taken
in her old age tells. She was what is called a good house-
[129]
keeper, a good neighbor, a kindly, resourceful woman. She
came now bringing treasures and comforts such as the Indiana
home of the Lincolns had never known. She brought com-
panions, too, for Sarah and Abraham, two girls and a boy
about their own age. In a day the little family of four be-
came eight. The cabin was filled to overflowing, but never
had life been &o comfortable and orderly as now.
To the boy Abraham the new mother's coming was of
special importance. Abraham Lincoln had that need of
women, natural to all strong masculine natures-need of their
companionship, confidence, affection. Without it life for
him at every stage would be incomplete. His mother had
given completeness to his childhood. His hunger for her
must have been pitiful. The healthfulness of the period of
adolescence which he was now entering was bound to depend
upon the woman his father had brought home. I think he
never had a doubt of her from the start. In his
written in 186o, he speaks of her as "a good and kind mother."
As for Mrs. Lincoln, her tribute to her son made to Mr. Hern-
don after Lincoln's assassination shows something of the re-
lation between them. "He was a good boy, and I can say
what scarcely one woman-a say in a thousand,
he never gave me a cross word or look. I never gave him a
cross word in all my life; his mind and mine seemed to run
together. I think he loved me truly. He was the best boy I
ever saw."
It was real friendship between them, mutual understand-
ing and mutual protection. He had the consideration for
others that belongs to a big nature, and in a hundred ways no
doubt from the start served his stepmother; she in return
saw something of his growing ambitions and protected him in
his efforts to learn.
For the great service' she undoubtedly rendered Abraham
[130]
Lincoln in those difficult years when, as one wise educator has
said, "every boy is a little mad," Sarah Lincoln has received
scant public recognition. So far as I know it was not until
the fall of 1922 that there was ever placed anywhere in her
honor so much as a single tablet. It is fitting that Elizabeth-
town, Kentucky, from which Thomas Lincoln took her,
should be the first to remember her. In the fall of last year
the Woman's Club of the town conducted the ceremony at the
placing in position in the court house of a bronze tablet to
Sarah Lincoln, presented by a native of the town, Dr. W. A.
Pusey of Chicago. In connection with this ceremony the club
published a pamphlet giving some details of Mrs. Lincoln's
life. This work is in line with other excellent local historical
work which the women had already done; the most important
of which has been the publication of the diary and notes of
Samuel Haycroft, for many years the county clerk-the man
whose name appears on the license issued on December 2,
1819, permitting "any authorized minister of the gospel or
authorized magistrate to join together in the honorable state
of matrimony Mr. Thomas Lincoln and Miss Sarah
Johnston."
It now remains for others to mark Sarah Johnston Lin-
coln's grave, to-day the one unremembered grave among those
of the women known to have been dear to Abraham Lincoln.
Outwardly the boy's life from now on until he was a man
grown was that of a day laborer; he was a farm hand, a car-
penter's assistant, a ferryman, a hired man. These were his
jobs. What part did they play in his making'? What was
their educational content'? Considerable, I have always be-
lieved. In the first place they clearly proved to him and to
others that he was not meant for manual labor. If he had
been "born" for the farm here was his chance; with his am-
bition and intelligence he might have gone far in farming
[131]
in southwestern Indiana, giving the business the touch of
genius in that locality which it seems always to have lacked.
There were those of his friends who did take to the farm;
it was their natural bent, but not his. Strong, good natured,
eager to excel, whatever the task he would go to any exertion
to outstrip those beside him. He seemed naturally to have
conscience about his work. Self-respect made it necessary for
him to keep up his end. These qualities made him a valuable
farm laborer, but the laborer never won; he seems never to
have had an idea of making farming a permanent occupation.
It was the same with carpentry and cabinetmaking. He
was Tom Lincoln's assistant, and Tom Lincoln was good at
his trade. How skillful a cabinetmaker he was I never
realized until recently I examined a piece of his work ex-
hibited in the relic room of the fine court house in Rockport,
county seat of Spencer County, Indiana, the town where the
Lincolns used to go to pay taxes and attend to court business.
This cabinet is perfectly authenticated, but in addition to the
testimony tacked on one of its front panels I had as a guide
a man who could tell me truthfully, "It stood in the very room
where I was born. Many is the time that as a child I have
gone to that cupboard for something to eat."
My guide was Mr. W. F. Adams of Rockport, a grandson
of Josiah and Elizabeth Crawford, the neighbors who figure
most largely in the Lincolns' lives in Indiana. Josiah Craw-
ford was a wheelwright, making not.onlywagons, but big
and little spinning wheels. Tom Lincoln did all the car-
penter work for their comfortable frame house-:-window
frames, doors, cupboards. Abraham had worked with him
on this job and had frequently served Josiah Crawford as a
hired man, indeed he had so completely won the heart and
respect of his employer-not an easy man to win if tradition
is to be believed-that, Mr. Adams declares, Lincoln's assas-
[132]
sination literally killed him. "He began to go down from the
day he heard of it."
Now this cupboard, so well authenticated, is important as
a proof of a considerable degree of craftsmanship on the part
of Tom Lincoln. It is thoroughly well made and carries a
rather elaborate cornice, but what interested me most was an
inlaid decoration in white ash running down the door jambs
on each side and the inlaid initials E. W. on the left-hand
door panel. The design is crude, to be su.re, but it shows a
sense of decoration and patriotism combined, for the curving
streamer falls from a star and at each bend there arises a tiny
flag. The inlaying is so well done that in spite of fully ninety
years of scrubbing and scouring it remains intact.
What this amounts to is that if Abraham Lincoln had had
any strong craft sense here was his chance. Furniture at
that day was largely made on the premises. Indeed at this
very moment back in the Shenandoah Valley, Tom's own
cousin, Abraham Lincoln, son of his uncle Jacob, was having
made in the garret over the kitchen of his fine house huge
pieces of mahogany furniture-a swelled front corner cabinet,
a tall clock, an elaborate desk. The wood, so the tradition
goes in the family, he had brought by ox teams from New
York City. But cabinetmaking was no more the boy's bent
than farming.
It was clear before Abraham was sixteen that the chief
interest he found in labor was the opportunity it gave him
of meeting men. That was why he liked going to the mill;
here were new people, fresh talk, news. He was greedy for
men and what they could tell him; that was why the jobs
he must take away from home after the summer's work was
over interested him. An ideal one came in the fall and winter
of 1826, when he was 17 ; this was running a ferryboat across
[133]
the Ohio from the mouth of Anderson's Creek where the
Lincoln's had landed in 1816.
It was a busy place, this landing, for here a big business
in shipping pork and corn and in supplying river steamers
with fuel had grown up. Chief of the pioneer merchants
was James Taylor, who managed the ferry, and to him Lincoln
hired himself out for the season; his pay six dollars a month
and board-board in his employer's family, where, luckily
for Abraham, there was a boy about his own age-Green
Taylor, later to be known as Captain Taylor. Twenty-five
years ago I was in correspondence with the captain, whose
recollections of Lincoln were definite and kindly. The thing
which he said most impressed him was Lincoln's reading often
"far into the night." Captain Taylor did not report to me a
story current in the neighborhood to-day of a quarrel with
Lincoln over a girl. There had been a h,usking bee and Abra-
ham drew a red ear. It gave him the right to kiss the girl he
liked best, and more honest than discreet he kissed his friend
Green Taylor's girl! The next day there was a fight and,
so goes the story, "Lincoln hit Taylor with an ear of corn,
making a scar Green carried as long as he lived!"
It was the ferry which gave him interest and excitement.
The stream of travel was constant. Not since he left the
Knob Creek home on the Nashville and Louisville Pike had
he seen so many people of so many kinds. There were
pioneers moving north and eager to know all he could tell
them of the country ahead; politicians sounding him out on
what people thought; anti-slavery agitators distributing
pamphlets and arguments; traders of all kinds; an occasional
scientist asking him questions about river life and habits; and
every now and then an itinerant preacher or circuit rider con-
cerned for his salvation-the motley life of the advance guard
of civilization, a strange blend of adventure and hope, mean
[134]
ness and courage, selfishness and devotion. He liked it all,
and daily soaked in its flavor and its meaning.
The travel down the river contributed no little to the
variety of his life, for here at Anderson's Creek the steamers
frequently tied up for the night and passengers and "hands"
came ashore for talk or fun. William Owen, who with his
father, Robert Owen, came down the Ohio on one of these
river boats in 1824 on their way to buy New Harmony from
the Rappites, tells in his journal of one of these night frolics
at an Indiana landing. The passengers going ashore built a
great fire and roasted beef for supper. Then, to end their
fun, burned down a tree ! These were the kind of sights
and contacts running a ferryboat brought to the observing
and eager boy that winter.
The river itself played upon his awakening nature. We
too easily overlook the part the natural world about us has in
our development-what the seasons, the stars, the trees, the
winds do to us. The Ohio here at Anderson's Creek makes a
majestic bend, giving an impression of vastness to the river-
the water steals rather than flows. There is so little per-
ceptible movement, so little sound that at night it is mys-
terious and almost fearsome, but in the mornings, the evenings,
under starshine and moonlight is marvelously beautiful. To
watch the great stream as he lay at night on its bank must
have stirred young Abraham often and deeply. And now
and then a lighted steamboat went by-lights from stem
to stern, music, song, perhaps something of revelry. What
allurement there must have been to the watching boy in such
a passing boat, coming from a world of which he knew noth-
ing, going to a world of which he knew less. How it must
have pulled at his head and heart and at all the young passions
in him!
When p r i n opened Abraham went back to the farm with
[135]
an idea. Why should they not raise enough produce to stock
a flatboat and he take it down the river to New Orleans in
the fall-go where the steamers went, you see! The produce
was raised largely by his efforts; the boat was built by him,
but he did not get to New Orleans that year, nor do we know
how he disposed of his stock; indeed, the only incident of this
venture of which we do know is one he once related to Secre-
tary Seward. It seems to have been the birth in him of the
idea that he could earn money-money for himself. His
boat had been finished and he was looking it over, wondering
if it were fit for the voyage, when a couple of men came down
to the bank and asked him to row them out to a steamer which
they had hailed and which had stopped to take them aboard.
He rowed them out and they threw down to him from the
steamer's deck fifty cents apiece-a dollar! "I could scarcely
believe my eyes as I picked up the money," Secretary Seward
reports Mr. Lincoln as saying. "I, the poor boy, had earned
a dollar in less than a day!"
But if Abraham did not get to New Orleans that year he
did the next, and in his autobiography, written in 186o, in
the third person, he tells the story quaintly and humorously,
if briefly:
"When he was nineteen, still residing in Indiana, he made his
first trip upon a flatboat to New Orleans. He was a hired hand
merely, and he and a son of the owner, without other assistance, made
the trip. The nature of part of the 'cargo-load,' as it was called,
made it necessary for them to linger and trade along the sugar
coast; and one night they were attacked by seven negroes with intent
to kill and rob them. They were hurt some in the melee, but
succeeded in driving the negroes from the boat, and then cut cable,
weighed anchor and left."
There's adventure for you! And what a fight it must have
been! And to what good purpose Abraham's great fists and
powerful arms must have worked!
[136]
A life of labor, hard but varied, marked by new scenes,
fresh contacts, fresh efforts, a constant call to ingenuity. Lin-
coln himself was wrong when he said of his life at this period
that tpere was nothing in it to awaken ambition. It was his
"inferiority complex" that spoke. This "complex" troubled
him all his life, and had it not been for his ambition, his
healthy common sense and the well of humor forever bubbling
in him it would undoubtedly have been his ruin.
Lincoln learned much in this period of labor important in
later life. His very speech took flavor from it. The horse,
the dog, the ox, the chin fly, the plow, the hog,' these com-
panions of his youth became interpreters of his meaning,
solvers of his problems in his great necessity, of making men
understand and follow him.
An element in the great strength of his debate with Doug-
las is the understanding and feeling it shows for labor and
the man that labors. He had learned in these days in In-
diana the place labor plays in man's progress; how an ad-
vancing civilization is built on it. The trees must be cut and
the fields cleared before food and shelter were possible. Roads
must be opened and wagons built before barter of extra prod-
uce could begin. It was by the labor of their hands and
brains that he, his father and their neighbors had opened
southwestern Indiana to the uses of men. He saw labor as
the foundation of all that might come after it, for he had
labored himself, starting a community.
This respect for the fundamet?-tal worthwhileness of labor
permeates the great debates, and gives to them a quality which
is found in no other of the many splendid arguments of the
period against the extension of slavery.
If Lincoln underestimated the "educational content" of the
many tasks to which his hands were turned in these years it
is because they were only a necessity, a temporary duty, a
[137]
makeshift for him. His mind was bent on another field. He
was after that kind of education which made "great men."
How did they become so'? What were they like'? Along
with farming and carpentering, flatboating and bartering went
from the first years in Indiana a search for knowledge.
[138]
XII
LINCOLN's INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING
P
ITY for Abraham Lincoln because he had no better op-
portunities for schooling in the years he spent in south
western Indiana has come to be a fixed tradition. I think
he always pitied himself a little. "Nothing but A, B, C
schools," kept "by Iittles," where a teacher who knew Latin
was looked upon as a wizard-"absolutely nothing to excite
ambition for education"-this was the despondent tone in
which he talked of his early chances. One might pity him
if, like most of his fellows, he had found no substitute; but
as it was, he is rather to be congratulated, for his mind wak-
ened up early, eager, greedy for knowledge. He had what
schools exist to give, and so many succeed only in stifling-
curiosity-curiosity about men and life-insatiable curiosity.
His was the kind of mind that found food anywhere-found
it in southwestern Indiana-plenty of it.
He may have had little chance at school, . but he made
much of that chance-much of his books-books like "The
Kentucky Preceptor"-a comprehensive, serious, grown-up
book, its reading exercises not expurgated of all high and
serious ideas, written down for young minds, but rather
selected for the purpose of pulling up young minds to solemn
and elevated thinking. They told of great deeds, of sacrifices
for freedom, of hatred of tyrants, of contempt for mean ac-
tions. "The Kentucky Preceptor" was calculated propagan-
dism for the ideals of democracy !
The very arithmetic that Abraham Lincoln studied puts
[139]
its problems in terms of American history: "General Wash-
ington was born in 1732. What was his age in 1787
As only the teacher had a book, the pupils must commit
the selections. The whole school room studied out loud, and
passers-by dubbed it the "blab school." It was in this ''blab
school" that Lincoln began the training of his memory, to
hold, as it did, page after page of verse and prose, to acquire
the habit of going over out loud the speech or document he
was preparing. He did it all his life, the sound of the phrase
helping him to clarify his thoughts.
He had, too, his first training in debating and declama-
tion in these schools. And there was no question that the
community counted him its prize boy, the one that was sure
to "stand up" longest at the spelling match, to win the debate,
to take the recitation prize. Every one of that considerable
group of southwestern Indiana people who remembered
him in his youth, and who repeated their reminiscences
from the time that reminiscences of him began to be
collected to the day of their death, have testified to his
superiority over his fellows. All of them had some in-
dividual experience to offer to prove that Lincoln was
"different" from those about him. He used his time differ-
ently, reacted differently to the life of the community, found
interest in things that meant nothing to his associates. He
was not merely concerned, like those about him, with his
job, his meals, his fun, his neighbors. He took his part-a
big part-in all these things, but there was something more-
something that impressed him on them, and made the elders
among them prophesy a future for him.
The intentness of his interest in knowledge, his power
of concentrating on books was particularly marked by these
serious elders. Josiah Crawford, for whom Lincoln did much
work as a hired man, talked of this. Crawford was the only
[140]
LINCOLN'S INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING
one among his neighbors, so far as I know, that ever remarked
Lincoln's habit of sticking out his left lower lip when his
mind was concentrated in reading or thinking. This habit,
fallen into in his youth, resulted in that protuberance of the
lower lip which is a distinguishing characteristic of his face.
Crawford used to banter the boy on his "stuck out lip."
In 1844, after fourteen years' absence from southwestern
Indiana, Lincoln came back in the Harrison campaign to
speak at Rockport, his old county seat, and Josiah Crawford
went down to hear him. In those days an Indiana audience
measured the importance of a speaker by the number of books
and pamphlets he brought with him. Lincoln came without
a printed page, and it bothered Mr. Crawford. "Where's
your books, Abe'?" he asked. "I haven't any. Sticking out
my lip is all I need." The old man told this tale with glee to
his death. It was their own little joke!
The only institution in the community outside of the
"A B C school" was the church. It was regarded by all as
the chief formative influence. It set the standard for con:.
duct. It acted as arbiter and frequently as policeman. The
church had a first place in the Lincoln family; just how im
portant has only recently been proved. That is, it is only
within a few years that the records of the Pigeon Church,
which Tom Lincoln and his family attended, have been made
public. My attention was first called to them by Mr. W. E.
Ellsworth, formerly of The Century Company, whose lecture
on Lincoln is so widely and favorably known.
In the fall of 1922 I first had my hands on the ancient
book in which the minutes of the church's business meetings
were set down from its organization in 1816 on into the
thirties. It's a precious document to a book lover, its big
sheets, probably 24 x 9 inches in size, being bound in a home-
made cowhide cover, from which the hair has been almost
[141]
entirely worn. Fortunately the Pigeon Church knows its
value, and one of the trustees, Mr. Louis Varner, of Booneville,
Indiana, guards it jealously. I went over every line of the
record last fall, but never for a moment was I out from under
a watchful eye, which is the way it sh.ould be. There would
be many more Lincoln papers in their proper places, particu-
lar 1 y in Illinois court houses, if their guardians had exercised
anything like the care Mr. Varner does over his trust.
The whole history of the church in the years the Lincoln
family lived in the neighborhood is set down in the minutes.
Although organized in 1816, it was n9t until 1822 that there
was a building in which to hold services. They had the same
trouble in Spencer, Indiana, in the early nineteenth century
in d e i d ~ n g on a site for the meeting house, on its size and
plan, as they had in Hingham, Massachuseets, in Samuel Lin-
coln's day.
So far as the records show, Tom Lincoln did not take
an active part in the discussions, which stretched on for many
months before a decision was finally reached which brought
the church within a mile of his home-a short mile across
country, a difficult mile with present roads. When the church
was finally established in his neighborhood, he joined by
letter, as the record shows:
"June 7, 1823, received Brother Thomas Lincoln by letter."
From the start Thomas Lincoln seems to have been active
in church affairs. For three years he was a trustee, being
finally relieved at his own request. It was the custom for
a church to send visitors to neighborhood churches, generally
on letters of invitation, and in 1824 Tom Lincoln, with two
of his neighbors, was sent to the Gilead Church as a visitor.
The conduct of members of the church was strictly watched;
the separation of a husband and wife, quarreling brothers and
[142]
sisters, absence from service, irregularities of every kind, mis-
conduct in meeting, were turned over to committees for in-
vestigation and report. Tom Lincoln frequently served on
such committees. That is, from the time the Pigeon Church
was established, he was one of the five or six most important
men in it.
The minute book contains only one record of subscriptions
to the support of the church. It is interesting as showing how
they did things in those days, also how they spelled:
"We the undersined do asign our names to pay the sevrial somes
annexed to our names in produce this fall to be delivered betwixt
the first and 20th of December, the produce is as follows corn wheat
whiskey pork Linnen wool or any other article or material to do the
work with. the produce will Be Dilevered at the meting hoas in
good marchanable produce.
"William Barker ere."
Lincoln's name is in the list of the "undersined"-
"Thomas Lincoln in corn manufactured pounds 24."
He and his wife Sarah remained in good and regular
standing in Pigeon Church up to the time that they left
Indiana in 1830, when they were granted a "letter of Dis-
mission." This letter was followed by an unpleasant incident.
After it was given, "Sister Nancy Grigsby" informed the
church that she was "not satisfied with Brother and Sister
Lincoln," and the trustees agreed to call back the letter they
had given until satisfaction could be obtained. It was
obtained, and a month later, to show the confidence which_
the church had in Tom Lincoln, it appointed him on a com-
mittee of five to settle a difficulty between the same Sister
Grigsby and Sister Betsy Crawford!
We can take it as certain that Abraham Lincoln was a
regular attendant at this church in which his father took so
important a part. There is a tradition that he acted as its
[143]
janitor, but of that there is no proof in existence, so far as I
know. The important thing, from the point of view of his
development, is what this church taught, what were its articles
of faith.
These are set down in the first page of the minute book
of Pigeon Church:
"We believe in one God the father the word and the Holy Ghost,
who hath created all things that are created by the word of his
power for his pleasure.
"We believe the old and new Testaments are the word of God
and there are every thing contained therein necessary for our salvation
and rule of faith and practice.
"We believe in the fall of man in his public head and that is
incapable of recovery unless restored by Christ.
"We believe in election by grace given us in Christ Jesus before
the world began and that God calls regenerates and sanctifies who
are made meet for glory by his special grace.
"We believe the righteous will persevere through grace to glory,
and none of them finally fall away.
"We believe in a general resurrection of the Just and unjust
and the joys of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked
are eternal.
"We believe that good works are the fruits of Grace and follow
after justification.
"We believe that Baptism and the Lords supper are ordinances
of Jesus Christ and that true believers are the only proper subjects
and the only proper mode of Baptism is immersion.
"We believe the washing of feet is a command to be complied
with when opportunity serves.
"We believe it is our duty severally to support the Lords table
and that we ought to administer the Lord's supper at least twice
a year.
"We believe that no minister ought to preach the gospel, that
is not called and sent of God, and they are to be proved by hearing
them, and we allow of none to preach amongst us but such as are
well recommended and that we ought to contribute to him who
faithfully labors among us in word and doctrines according to our
several abilities of our temporal things."
[144]
The record shows that these articles of faith were faith-
fully followed. They were careful whom they should invite
to speak, no "strange foreigner" being allowed uniess he came
"well recommended as a preacher of the Gospel." They held
their communion service regularly; they baptized by immer-
sion, and foot-washing was practiced regularly, as it is to-day
in this same church.
Abraham Lincoln never joined Pigeon Church. Its
peculiar ceremonies made little or no impression upon him;
but that he pondered deeply the articles of faith, and the in-
terpretation given them by those he heard in the pulpit, and
in the constant discussion of them that went on at his own and
neighboring firesides, is certain. It is certain, too, that out
of this pondering there came a deep reverence for the spirit of
Christianity and a code of conduct for his relations with men
and women as nearly in accord with the spirit of the Gospels,
as high, as noble, as generous as that which has regulated the
life of any man in the public life of this or any other country.
It was in books, however, that Lincoln began, probably
as early as ten years of age, to find the most satisfying food
for his curious, searching mind. We have his own word
for it that the first book that stirred his curiosity in regard
to this country and how it came into being, as well as
awakened his reverence for the ideas behind it, was Weem's
"Life of Washington."
In February of 1861, when he was on his way to his
inauguration, he told the senate of New Jersey that this book
fell into his hands in the earliest days of his being able to
read, and that the impressions it made had lasted longer than
any others. And they were fine impressions-of men
struggling for their liberty-they stirred his imagination and
assumed more and more importance in his mind; they meant
something more to him than national independence, he said;
[145]
they held out "a 'great promise to all the people of the world,
for all time to come.' "
I have always believed that the book which gave body to
this aroused interest, which helped him to define and clarify
the notions that the "Life of Washington" had aroused in
him, was a book which one of his older friends in the neigh-
borhood, Mr. David Turnham, of the town nearest to the
Lincolns, Gentryville, put in his way. David Turnham was
the sheriff of the county, an able and kindly pioneer, in whom
Lincoln had aroused a very genuine interest. It was in his
home that Lincoln came across The Revised Statutes of
Indiana.
The title does not sound hopeful, but as an introduction
to the statutes, the book contained the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, the Constitution of the United States, the Act of
Virginia passed in 7 ~ 3 by which the territory "northwest-
ward of the River Ohio was conveyed to the United States,"
and the Articles of 1787 for governing this territory, con-
taining the famous article reading:
"There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the
said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof
a party shall have been duly convicted; provided always that any
person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is law-
fully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may
be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming him or
her labor, as aforesaid."
That is, at eighteen, on top of the impressions derived
from his study of Washington's life, Lincoln had put into
his hands the documents on which this country has been
built and shaped. They took a tremendous hold of him.
He followed the bit of autobiography quoted above a few
days later with a second bit, drawn from him by the emotion
which he felt at finding himself in the Hall of Independence
[146]
in Philadelphia. "All the political sentiments I entertain,"
he said in confessing to his emotion, "have been drawn, so
far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments
which originated and were given to the world from this Hall.
I never had a feeling politically that did not spring from
the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence."
It was in David Turnham's Statutes of Indiana that he
first found these sentiments. He did not merely read the
documents in the Revised Statutes, he studied them, pon-
dered them, saturated himself with them. They were the
strongest, most satisfying food his mind had yet found.
All of the discussion of contemporary politics which went
on in the neighborhood, the weekly talks over the news that
took place in Jones' grocery store in Gentryville after the
newspaper had come in from Louisville-all of this gave him
a chance to apply the principles and to check up the way they
were working. He had his chance now to learn the fight that
must be made before a fine article like No. 6 in the Ordinance
of 1787 was assured of realization. An incessant struggle went
on against that article in Illinois in these years, repeated
petitions being sent to Congress asking its repeal. The
struggle that Illinois was making for freedom was reflected
in the Pigeon Church, the Baptists being sharply divided on
the question of slavery. Indeed Lincoln must have known of
the Baptist Church founded in Illinois in 1809 by a friend
of Thomas Jefferson, the Rev. James L e ~ e n who early in
the century had, at Jefferson's request, come to the territory
for the express purpose of spreading anti-slavery notions, and
who, at Jefferson's suggestion, finally organized a church on
a strictly anti-slavery basis.
He must have heard often repeated, too, the story of
Edward Coles of Virginia-high born, rich, cultivated, whose
hatred of slavery was such that in 1819, after a preliminary
[147]
exploration trip in southern lllinois and the purchase there of
a large tract of land, he had sold his Virginia home, gathered
all his slaves together and turned westward. All up and
down the Ohio Valley the story was told and retold of how
Mr. Coles, after starting down the river on flatboats, had, for
the first time, made known to his slaves his intmtion of free-
ing them. The scene that followed his announcement had
moved the whole anti-slavery world. The black men and
women had fallen on their knees and wept with gratitude, but
they refused to leave their liberator until he was settled. In
southern Illinois Coles deeded to each negro family 16o acres
of land, and arranged to give them employment while they
were settling and developing their holdings.
Every anti-slavery man in the country had at his tongue's
end the preamble of the freedom papers Edward Coles
issued on 1819, to these people:
"Not believing that man can have of right property in his fellow
man, but that on the contrary all mankind are endowed by nature
with equal rights, I do therefore by these presents restore to
. . that inalienable liberty of which he (or she) has been
deprived."
Do not imagine that young Abraham Lincoln was not
familiar with this episode or could not quote this preamble,
or that he was not familiar with the whole story of Edward
Coles' splendid later fight which was so large a factor in
making Illinois free.
There were many other things going on around him cal-
culated to stir and enlarge his mind. The intellectual and
moral resources of the section of the country in which Lincoln
passed the years from seven to twenty-one were than
the abundant reminiscences collected from his old neighbors
in and around the Lincoln farm reveal. It was the intimate,
daily thing they remembered about the boy and his life there;
[148]
it was not of the ideas that were stirring him, not of his inner
mental life that Dennis Hanks and his kind could tell. In
Lincoln we have a mind receptive to "things in the air" as
well as indefatigable in the search for what he wanted most
-that is, for men to talk with, books to read. There were
more of both than I at least have until recently realized.
If we are to take literally what he once told a friend-
that he had read every book within fifty miles of his home-
he had read much more widely and generally than the meager
list, so familiar to Lincoln students, indicates. That list
includes, besides the Life of Washington and the Statutes of
Indiana, mentioned above, the Bible, with which, of course,
he was thoroughly familiar, -LEsop's Fables, Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe. These must have been
only a small percentage of what he actually read. He drew
on the resources of towns like Rockport, Booneville, Troy;
he probably also drew on Princeton, Evansville, possibly
New Harmony. He found ways to get to a book.
We must remember that from the time he was fifteen or
sixteen, he was spending probably several months of every
year away from home, at work, and that wherever he was,
at home or abroad, he had the practice of joining the crowd
when something unusual was going on-a murder trial,
political gatherings, camp meetings-and that in these crowds
he managed to make acquaintance with the most important
men. The names of some of these men are familiar. There
was Judge John Pitcher, of Rockport; there was Judge
Breckinridge, of Booneville-men whose work in the devel-
opment and upbuilding of their communities and their state
have become part of the history of Indiana. Lincoln made
his way to them, forced their attention, submitted his ideas
--even his attempts at writing, to Judge Pitcher, whose
comment on one of his compositions was that "the world
[149]
couldn't beat it." Among others with whom he came in
contact was a congressman of his district, Ratcliff Boone, and
here there was more than a political connection-there was
the long association of Boones and Lincolns, their inter-
marriages, their pioneering together to give a background and
a kind of intimacy. But that his association stopped with
- the three or four superior men whose names figure in all of
the collections of reminiscences of Lincoln in southwestern
Indiana is not likely.
There has been in the last few years a considerable amount
of solid work done on the character of the men and women
who settled this comer of the state; particularly important
from the Lincoln standpoint, is that of Judge John E. Igle-
hart, of Evansville, Indiana, president of the Southwestern
Indiana Historical Society. Judge Iglehart's work gives us
a better basis for judging of the caliber of the men under
whose indirect influence at least Lincoln certainly came at
this time, than we have ever had before. He has developed,
with a wealth of detail, the character of the English settle-
ment which started in 1817 north of Evansville and twenty-
five or thirty miles west of where Lincoln lived-a settlement
whose descendants are still among the leading people of the
section.
These English settlers, as well as the Scotch and Scotch-
Irish that came with or followed them, were intelligent,
thoughtful people, many of them with property, who had left
their homes because of the dark prospects in Europe. Their
small properties, they complained, were "wearing to pauper-
ism." Moreover, the interferences with their socia;l and
religious affairs were so constant and humiliating that they
were willing to undergo any hardships to get a better chance
and greater freedom in the world. The experiences of these
men at home, the ideas that they brought with them, the way
[150]
they went to work to build up communities-all of these
things must have been matters of discussion at Jones' grocery
in Gentryville and everywhere else that Lincoln met with
men. The English settlers brought books, many of them, as
Judge Iglehart shows, and it is his opinion that many of
these books found their way into young Abraham Lincoln's
hands.
Another stimulating and enlightening social experience
that Lincoln had under his eye at this time was the brilliant
though short-lived communistic undertaking which Robert
Owen started in 1825 at New Harmony, Indiana, only fifty
miles west of the Lincoln farm. Probably no communistic
undertaking in the world ever began with better pros-
pects, for Owen purchased outright a substantial town and
thousands of acres of cultivated land which a religious com-
munistic group known as the Rappites had brought to a fine
degree of development. Owen not only had a town to start
with, but he was able to gather about him many brilliant
people, among them altogether the most distinguished group
of scientists that the country had as yet seen. Owen and the
best known of his followers came down the Ohio River in
January, 1826, when Lincoln was running his ferryboat at
the mouth of Anderson's Creek. The travelers were known
up and down the river as the "boatload of knowledge," and
we can well believe that their reputation stirred the curiosity
and the ambition of the boy who, for all we know, may have
watched them float by.
What was said and done at New Harmony was thoroughly
reported in all the countryside, for the communists took pains
to scatter not only their pamphlets, but copies of the weekly
paper, The New Harmony Gazette, and also to send agents
far and wide, trying to convert the settlers to their ideas.
People of all sorts flocked to them; people of all sorts started
[151]
other communistic settlements in the surrounding country ..
Groups of settlers, seeing the practical benefits of cooperation,
made their own little attempts at "the New Social Order,"
as Owen called his undertaking. For five years it ran like
a fever over the country, and then as quickly as it started,
as quickly it collapsed-too much of a strain on impatient
human nature, ready to take all the advantages of beautiful
dreams, but unwilling to make the sacrifice and give the effort
that realization demands.
From this, the most exciting episode in their part of the
world in his time, Lincoln must have learned many things.
The emphasis Owen and his friends placed on universal educa-
tion at public expense took hold of him. The rightness of
larger religious as well as social and political freedom of
thought appealed to him; and the continual emphasis placed
on kindness, courtesy and by Owen found a response
in his nature. That is, the newcomers, whatever their prac-
tical limitations, filled the air with noble ideas, developed
with ardor and conviction-ideas which may have had much
more to do with the development of young Abraham Lincoln
than he himself realized.
It was here in southwestern Indiana, too, according to a
bit of autobiography which he once related to a friend, that
romance for him was born. This friend told me the story
years ago, and it still remains, so far as I know, the most
revealing thing that we have of this side of Lincoln's nature
in the Indiana period. The awakening started in an incident
common enough in that day. A passing wagon had broken
down near the Lincoln home. There were a woman and two
girls in the party, and, with pioneer hospitality, Mrs. Lincoln
had invited them to cook in her kitchen while repairs were
making. While waiting the woman read the children stories
from books she had with her, the first, Lincoln says, he ever
[152]
heard. One of the girls took his fancy; he could not forget
her after the party moved on, and began to spin a romance:
He would take his father's horse, follow the wagon and
persuade the girl to elope. In imagination he did so, and they
started off across the prairies. But the horse came back to
camp. Three times they tried this, and every time the horse
came back. And then they concluded they ought not to elope.
But that was not the end; he stayed in the camp until he
had won the father's consent to marry the girl ! This, he told
his friend, he believed to be "the beginning of love" with
him.
It is safe to say, I think, that in these fourteen years that
Lincoln spent in southwestern Indiana, hard as he labored,
pinching as the times often may have been, meager as his
apparent opportunities, his nature and his mind were awakened
to noble ideas and emotions, and while he undoubtedly came
in close contact with meanness, grossness, vulgarity of every
sort, and while undoubtedly he shrank from no experience
and no exhibit of human nature, he came through unscathed.
It was a fine, big, manly, thoughtful boy that left Indiana in
the spring of 1830, for in March of that year the Lincolns
"moved out." Their determination had e ~ n taken the year
before, preparations had been made through the winter, and
in March they started.
[153]
XIII
STARTING OUT FOR HIMSELF
l ~ THY did Tom Lincoln decide in 1829 to move his family
V V from southwestern Indiana, after a residence there of
some. fourteen years'? An easy way to dismiss the question
has been to answer that he was shiftless and unstable. The
more we know of him the more this judgment is unsatis-
factory. As a matter of fact, he was preparing, when he
decided to move, to build a new house on his Spencer County
farm, part of the lumber having already been turned out.
Why the sudden change'?
There was a combination of reasons. Undoubtedly, there
was the pull from Illinois. The tide of immigration at this
period was all west to Illinois and Missouri or north to
Michigan. Tom's brother Mordecai had already moved into
Hancock County, Illinois, and his wife's relatives, William
and Joseph Hanks and their families, were settled in the new
state. Wonderful tales of fertility came back. T h ~ n too,
Spencer County was standing still. Looking over the records
at Rockport recently, I found few land entries between 1818
and 1832. But undoubtedly the deciding factor was the
panic that seized the Lincolns when, in 1829, there was
another outbreak of the disease which had carried off Nancy
Hanks and so many of their neighbors in the fall of 1818.
They literally fled for safety, but they took their time pre-
paring for it!
In September, Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln went back to Eliza-
bethtown, where they owned a lot. This they sold for $123.
[154]
The deed in this sale disposes of the theory that Sarah never
went back to her old home after her marriage to Thomas
Lincoln, since the clerk, Samuel Haycraft, who made out the
deed, declares that she "was examined by me privately and
apart from her said husband" and did "freely and willingly
subscribe" to the sale. In February of 1830 the Lincolns
sold their Indiana farm of eighty acres to Charles Grigsby for
$125, "paid before the signing"-an indication of the little
value there was in Spencer County property at that moment.
In March a party of Lincolns, Hanks and Johnstons-
thirteen in all-started for Macon County, Illinois. One who
has been over the roads of southwestern Indiana even to-day
and when they are dry-a hair-raising experience in some
places for a car-cannot but wonder that even a group of
pioneers would start at that time of year. However, they
were probably better equipped for their undertaking than
biographers have represented. That they started out with
"one team of four oxen," as I once set down, is certainly
incorrect. I was taken to task for this statement by a pioneer
who had done business in the region in early days. My
critic, Mr. John Davis of Junction City, Kansas, declared
that old settlers would agree that it would have been difficult
for four oxen to have drawn even an empty wagon through
the deep mud of an Illinois March.
"I remember well," he wrote, "that in the forties it was impossible
for four good horses to draw the usual mail coach in the muddy
spring time on the mail route from Springfield to Terre Haute. So,
in Marek and part of April the coach was usually abandoned, and
the leather letter bags only were taken through on a two-wheeled
cart, drawn by four good horses, with relays of fresh horses every
twelve or fifteen miles. The sacks of newspapers and similar matter
were stored up at the station until the roads got better.
"In the spring of 1851 I myself had occasion to send a load
of nursery stock from a point in Macon County to several points in
[ISS]
.IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE LINCOLNS
Shelby and Coles Counties, southeastward from Decatur. I selected
a very strong light wagon, usually known as a two-horse lumber
wagon, and loaded it with about fifteen hundred pounds of plants.
And it required seven yoke of oxen in the hands of two experienced
drivers to make the trip. These are examples. I spent forty-seven
years of my life ( 1825 to 1872) in Sangamon and Macon Counties,
and it was no uncommon thing to see men 'stuck in the mud' with four
horses attached to an empty wagon. Sometimes wheels were abandoned
for weeks at a time, and traveling was done on foot or on horseback.
The use of two tall wheels, surmounted by a light pine box, drawn
by two horses, was not uncommon for several weeks during muddy
weather.
"So, then, a team of 'four oxen' to that Lincoln wagon would
have been a very helpless team indeed; and to have started it on a
journey without any other team to help it through the worst places
would not have been attempted by sensible people."
This is sound sense. Moreover, as Mr. Davis points out
-something that I had overlooked-Lincoln himself says of
their moving that their "mode of conveyance was wagons
drawn by ox teams," he driving one of the teams.
Twenty-five years ago I went to some trouble to work
out what seemed to me the probable route the party followed;
but no sooner was my map published than I began to receive
criticisms from points along the Wabash. The librarian at
New Harmony was su_re, for instance, that they had crossed
there. His evidence was that a clerk of the Circuit Court,
living three miles out in the country, told him once that the
Lincolns stopped at his father's house on their way to Illinois.
If the matter was to be decided by people who to-day feel
sure that the Lincolns had.spent the night with their fathers
and grandfathers, we would have a route that zig-zagged _up
and down Indiana from New Harmony to Vincennes and criss-
crossed some half a dozen different counties. The best that
ever will be done in fixing the route has been done in Indiana
by the ~ i n o l n Highway Commission in its report to Governor
[IJ6].
Ralston, made in December, 1916; and in Illinois by Charles
M. Thompson's admirable and interesting "Investigation of
the Lincoln Way" reported by the Illinois State Historical
Library to the Illinois legislature in 1915. According to the
first the Lincolns journeyed northwest into Indiana, through
Jasper and Petersburg to Vincennes. "Official" though the
decision, I heard no little grumbling over it around Booneville
last fall. Somebody' s grandfather had talked with them as
they passed!
In Illinois Mr. Thompson decides on the following points:
"I, a point on the Illinois bank of the Wabash River opposite
Vincennes, Indiana; 2, Lawrenceville; 3, Christian Settlement;
4, Russellville; 5, Palestine; 6, Hutsonville; 7, York; 8, Darwin;
g, Richwoods; IO, McCann's Ford; II, Paradise; I2, Mattoon;
I3, Dead Man's Grove; I4, Nelson; IS, Decatur; I6, 'Lincoln Farm,'
Macon County."
One thing we do know from Lincoln himself, and that is
that when finally, after a fortnight of the heaviest kind of
travel, the caravan approached Decatur in Macon County,
for which they were headed, they drove in from the south
and, as near as Mr. Lincoln could estimate, along the main
line of the Illinois Central Road.
When one is on a Lincoln pilgrimage, such as I am report-
ing here, he has the first sense of being in a living Lincoln
country when he reaches Decatur. It is the first place where
there are still people who really knew him, and is one of the
four or five Illinois towns which treasure most sympathetically
and intelligently its Lincoln contacts, which seem really not
only to revere but love the man. This comes naturally not
only from the fact that their recollections date from his first
appearance in Illinois, but that they are continuous to his
death. In 1918 at an Old Settlers' meeting in Decatur there
were 150 persons present who had seen Lincoln and remem-
[157]
bered something about him. Every spot connected with his
life there is being properly marked, and the town has in its
fine library one of the choicest small Lincoln collections in
the country. When your interest in Lincoln is known people
press to aid you.
The first thing of course is to follow the route which
the Lincoln caravan probably took out of the town in 1830,
to what is now known as "Lincoln's Riverside Horne." This
was the piece of land, some eight miles away, which John
Hanks, who had preceded them into Illinois, had selected for
them on the bluff above the Sangarnon River. Here they
"squatted," built a cabin, cleared and fenced ten acres of land,
and put in a first crop of corn. Of this work Abraham did a
full share, for though he was now past his twenty-first birth-
day, he seems to have been unwilling to abandon his father
until he was settled.
The young man's life in the first year in Illinois has been
generally neglected by his biographers. As a matter of fact,
it was an interested and varied, if hard, year for him. The
country into which they had come was sparsely settled and
very poor. The taxes of Macon County in 1829 had amounted
to only $109.320. Decatur was only nine months old, and
although plotted and officially the county seat, the first session
of court was not held until May, 1830. The only building
of any size was Uncle Jimmy Renshaw's general store. There
were as yet no roads, only trails. The mail carne in rarely,
and only from the north. The vast prairies were regarded
as unfit to till, and reasonably enough, for they were under
water a good part of the year. The grass which covered them
was like a jungle, growing six to eight feet high, while the
sod was so tough that no plow then known could cut it. Yet
these plains were rarely beautiful. Those who remember them
tell you of acres upon acres of blue iris, so thick that one
[158]
could scarcely pass through it-of strawberries so many and
so big that the legs of the horses would be stained red to
the knees.
Of game there was of course no end. One of the most
,interesting of Decatur's early settlers, Dr. Pasley, contends
that if ever there was a country which God prepared espe-
cially for settlers, it was this Illinois land; that here wild
hogs, wild turkeys, deer, game of every kind was to be had
for the capture, and that this gave not only food for the
family, but valuable meats for the St. Louis market. Then
there were bees. It was a bee hunter's paradise, and honey
was one of the best crops.
. There was plenty of work for a sturdy young man like
Lincoln, among the neighbors as well as at home. The family
for which he probably worked most steadily and which has
passed on the most interesting reminiscences of him, was that
of Major Warnick, three or four miles away from where he
lived. Here he helped with the plowing, the planting, the
harvesting and clearing; and here, as he had done in Indiana,
he searched the house for books and at the noon hour stretched
himself out to read.
It was here at Warnick's, if we are to believe tradition,
that Lincoln had his first serious love affair-serious enough
for him to wish to marry the girl. Major Warnick had a
daughter Mary, and the story goes that Lincoln paid her
somewhat impassioned court. However, as she was married
the summer after he came to Illinois, it must have been a
short courtship. He is reported to have been attentive later
to another young girl of the neighborhood, Miss Jemima Hill,
and this story is not spoiled by Jemima's marrying the year
Abraham was her neighbor. Just how seriously he was stirred
it is impossible to say. Of course he was interested in girls
at that time. Of course his mind was turning to a mate.
[159]
And equally of course many a family that would have looked
askance upon him as a member in those days is glad now to
boast that he wanted to marry one of their grandmothers.
Mr. H. W. Fay, the custodian of the Lincoln Monument in
Springfield, says that if all the different visitors who tell
him that Lincoln once courted their grandmothers state the
truth, the man must have been the busiest of philanderers!
At all events, it is good to know that there were young women
of fine families like the Warnicks and the Hills who were
friendly enough to him to give even slight ground for the
traditions. It shows that he was able to make a place for him
self in the new neighborhood if not to win a wife!
Possibly, if it had not been for sickness and disastrous
weather conditions which ended in driving Tom Lincoln away
from the "Riverside Home," Lincoln might have been per-
manently associated with Decatur. But some six months
after their arrival the whole family was stricken with fever
and ague-the bane of the prairie countries in those days.
The miasma which poured from ~ h undrained lowlands, the
fogs which shut them in like a black, wet blanket, all encour-
aged the disease. One gets a hint of h ~ w it was affecting
Tom Lincoln from the accounts of James .Renshaw's general
store in Decatur, for in October of the year charges began to
appear opposite Tom Lincoln's name for what was called
''Barks''- a Peruvian bark and whisky tonic generally used
by settlers for ague. Poor Tom and his family must have
been badly afflicted, judging from the amount of "Barks"
which they bought!
On top of this affliction there came the most terrible
winter known in the written history of Illinois-"the winter
of the deep snow." It began on the twenty-ninth of December
-a fall of two and a half feet, all over the northern part
of the state. A frost followed, and on top of this came
[16o]
STARTING OUT FOR HIMSEL
FllAGMENTS FROM THE DAYBOOK OF JAMES RENSHAW, WHO KEPT A GENEIA.L
STORE IN DECATUR, ILLINOIS, AT WHICH THE LINCOLNS TRADED,
[161]
another deep fall. For over two months the country was
under something like four feet of snow. Many of the settlers
were so nearly entombed that it was only at the risk of their
lives that they were able to get out to have their corn ground.
Deer frequently joined the herds of cows, and the wolves,
which were able to go about on the light crust,. were more
fierce and bold than ever. There is no doubt that the Lincoln
family suffered terribly in this winter. In this period
Abraham is said to have frozen his feet in trying to get to
Major W amick' s, so that for a considerable period he had to
be cared for at their home.
However hard the winter may have been, it did not
prevent Abraham, John Hanks and John Johnston, his step-
brother, from contracting ~ take a flatboat down the Illinois
and the Mississippi to New Orleans as soon as the season
opened.
It was the first of March before they could get out of
Macon County, and even then there was no traveling over
land, so flooded were the prairies by the melting of the big
snow. There was nothing to do but to buy a canoe and
float down the Sangamon River. "This is the time," says
Lincoln's autobiography, "and the manner of Abraham's first
entrance into Sangamon County."
It was the time and the manner, too, of his first going
on his own. Indeed, there was nothing for him to do but let
the Lincolns, the Hanks and the Halls shift for themselves.
Tom Lincoln never attempted to prove up his title to the land
on which he had built his cabin and made improvements.
Indeed, the first certificate of entry for the "Lincoln River-
side Home" was in 1836 by one Percy Strickland. The
land, as the chain of titles in the Decatur Lincoln collection
shows, passed through many hands. Now it is under a
trusteeship, set aside by its last owner to establish and main
[162]
tain, after his wife's death, a home for orphan children under
sixteen years of age. What better monument to Lincoln's
year in Macon County could we have'?
From the "Riverside Home" Tom Lincoln went into Coles
County, some twelve miles from Charleston. There he
entered land, and there, in 18 51, he died. The disastrous
year on the banks of the Sangamon seems to have broken him
entirely. He was fifty years old when he moved out of
Indiana-a serious age at which to be attacked by fever and
ague. He never recovered entirely from it. It is a disease
which saps energy, and for energy Tom had never been dis-
tinguished. Never again was he able to get hold, and indeed
it was a very difficult thing in the neighborhood where he had
gone for even a young and healthy man. He might raise good
crops, but to dispose of those crops, .cut off as he was from
markets by the lack of any kind of reasonable transportation,
was almost impossible. For him, shaken with chills and
fever, discouraged by the loss incident to his last move, it
was rather too much to be expected. Most of the party that
had come with him into Illinois settled about him, but none
of them ever did more than to grub out a meager existence.
But, as we shall see, they never dropped out of Lincoln's life;
to the end he was their counselor and their chief dependence.
The Sangamon River, down which Lincoln floated in
March of 1831, is a powerful winding stream, cutting out
high bluffs and leveling big plains, all the way from the
northern part of what is now Champaign County, southwest
to Decatur, then westward to within a few miles of Spring-
field, then northwestward to the Illinois River near Beards-
town. It is wayward as it is winding, overflowing vast
stretches of country at times of the year; its channel frequently
blocked with driftwood; its moods as uncertain as those of the
[163]
Mississippi or the Missouri; its possibilities of use and of
destruction only limited by its size.
To Lincoln the river from the start was the hope of the
Illinois country. He saw, as every intelligent settler did,
that unless there could be practical connections at once opened
to markets, there was little chance of poor settlers, like his
father and himself, being able to hold out long enough to
establish themselves permanently. Roads meant time and
money. Here was a river. His experience on the Ohio and
the Mississippi, the reliance of southwestern Indiana upon
them, made him feel strongly from his first carping into Macon
County that their hope was in the Sangamon.
Indeed, his first public speech in Illinois, so far as tradition
goes, was on this very theme. It was one of John Hanks'
favorite stories about him. As Mr. Herndon tells it-and he
had it first hand-it goes: "After Abe got to Decatur, or
rather to Macon County, a man by the name of Posey came
into our neighborhood and made a speech. It was a bad one,
and I said Abe could beat it. I turned down a box and Abe
made his speech. The other man was a candidate-Abe
wasn't. Abe beat him to death, his speech being on naviga-
tion of the Sangamon River."
It is too late a date for the spot on which this speech was
made to be fixed, but there is no early Illinois reminiscence
of Lincoln of more real importance than this, the first political
speech of which we have an account, and one on a theme so
essential to the life and growth of the town and of Illinois
-transportation. Decatur ought to find a possible spot and
put up a marker!
He studied his subject as they paddled their way down
the stream to meet the man to whom they had hired them-
selves out-a man who for a year or two was to have a
considerable part in young Lincoln's life. This man, Denton
[164]
Offutt, had promised to have the flatboat which he had hired
the boys to take down the Mississippi ready at Beardstown
on the Illinois River. They were to meet him at Springfield;
but when they reached Springfield they found the boat was
not ready; and they hired themselves out to him at $12 a
month each to get out lumber and build a boat.
This work was done at a settlement on the Sangamon
River, seven miles northwest of Springfield, known as Old
Sangamon. To-day nothing remains of the town, except
possibly an occasional sunken foundation of a former cabin;
and yet it is a spot to be remembered, for if it was in Macon
County that Lincoln first comes into history as a political
speechmaker, it is in Sangamon County that he first appears
as a royal story teller.
Twenty-five years ago I knew in Springfield, Illinois, an
interesting old gentleman, John Roll-a young man in Old
Sangamon when Lincoln and his companions appeared there
to build their flatboat. He was one of several who helped
in the undertaking, and, according to Mr. Roll, no gang of
workers ever had more amusement out of a companion than
they did out of Abraham Lincoln.
It was at the noon hour especially that he made his hit
with them. Seated on a long log, he would tell stories so
irresistibly droll that at their end the whole gang would,
according to Mr. Roll, "whoop and roll off." For a time
after Lincoln had gone about his business "Abe's log" was a
favorite resting place for the group at evening time and his
stories their favorite entertainment. Abe's log deserves a
tablet, not only because here he first displayed that accom-
plishment which was to play so important a part in the sway
he came to exercise over men, but because here he first demon-
strated in Illinois his characteristic courage and resource-
fulness.
The swift current of the flooded river had overturned a
log canoe in which a couple of men were paddling. They
had taken refuge in a tree where they really were in danger
of their lives. Lincoln improvised a rescue by attaching a
long cable to a log. A daring chap straddled this and piloted
it to the tree, but in his rashness fell into the water and had
to find a perch with the others. It was Lincoln himself that
then took charge of the log life boat, and in his cool fashion
made his way to the refuge and gathered in the wet and half
frozen captives. Nobody in that community forgot the
episode, we can be sure.
It was along about the middle of April that Denton
Offutt's flatboat was finally loaded and launched and started
on its way for New Orleans. Only a few miles below Old
Sangamon Lincoln met with an adventure which has played
a large part in pictures and stories of his life. There used
to hang in the capitol of Illinois in Springfield a crude but
realistic painting of this episode. They have taken it away
-mistakenly, I think. It may be "crude and inaccurate" as
I myself once wrote in describing it, but it is amusing and
interesting. Moreover, it has a real place in the development
of the pictorial side of Lincoln legends. This picture shows
-which was the fact-that just below a great bend in the
Sangamon a mill dam and a mill had been built, and that
when the Lincoln boat reached the spot, instead of going
properly over, it caught, the cargo settling back and the boat
filling with water.
The news of the accident brought all the inhabitants from
a town on the top of the bluff near-by, New Salem, to the
mill dam. There, as spectators, they had Sangamon County's
second evidence that there was passing through it a young
man of unusual cool-headedness and resourcefulness, for,
while everybody shouted contradictory counsels, he, unmind-
[166]
ful, unloaded his goods into a boat he had borrowed, bored
a hole in the end of the craft which hung over the dam, tilted
it until the water ran out, when over it slipped and soon went
on its w.ay. He had given New Salem something to talk
about. They might not know his name or expect ever to see
him again, but they rehearsed the tale in Rutledge's tavern
on the bluff that night, as well as in more than one cabin.
It was the handling of these two difficulties, and others
that we can well believe must have occurred in the long trip
down the Mississippi and in the trading at New Orleans, that
led Lincoln's employer, Denton Offutt, to feel that he had
found just the man he wanted for a business enterprise he
was undertaking at New Salem. He had started a store
on the bluff above the mill dam and a mill on the river. He
wanted a trustworthy manager for both. Lincoln was
his man.
The trip down the river took three months, bringing him
back to New Salem in July of 1831. A developing experi
ence it had been. That is, the young man who walked across
country from Beardstown, where the steamer would have
left him in those days, to New Salem was something more
of a man than the one who had gone down the river three
months before. He had had a month in one of the most
exciting and riotous cities on this continent at that time-
a month rubbing elbows with flatboat men, river captains,
would-be pirates and filibusters, and he had seen for the
first time an institution of slavery unknown to the world in
which he had lived-although it might recognize slavery, as
Kentucky did, and hold on to a few slaves as southwestern
Indiana and Illinois still did, in spite of ordinances and laws
-this was the slave market.
I think the most we can say for this experience in the
New Orleans slave market was that it aroused an emotion
[16]]
in regard to slavery which he had never before experienced.
Up to this time Lincoln had had the moral and intellectual
conviction that slavery was wrong, but that he had real feel-
ing about it I doubt very much. That what he saw in New
Orleans aroused .a flare of hatred and revolt seems to be
certain, and it is that experience which makes his trip down
the river in 1831 of particular importance in his development
-a thing not to be forgotten as we follow his life.
That he came back to New Salem with any other idea
than that he had here job which seemed a little advance
on what he had had before and that possibly, too, it was a
job which would give him an opportunity to read more than
he had ever had a chance to do before, I doubt very much.
All that New Salem could have seen in Abraham Lincoln
when he joined the settlement was an unusually resourceful,
diligent and cheerful jack-of-all-trades. The interesting
thing is that they remembered him; he had done something
in passing three months before that impressed them. They
welcomed him back. Indeed, one of the most significant
things about his first few months in Illinois is that he made a
definite impression on everybody of intelligence whom he
touched.
The cultivated and delightful gentleman in Decatur of
whom I spoke above, Dr. Pasley, now eighty-five years of
age, told me that his father, who first came to Macon County
in 1826, knew Lincoln in the months that he labored near
Decatur, and remembered specific things about him. Abraham
Lincoln as a young man, he claimed to be one of those people
that nobody forgot-the W amicks, the Hills, the Pasleys, all
remembered him-remembered him as diligent, kind, strong,
and as "different"-somebody who knew and did and said
things that you could not forget.
[t68]
XIV
NEW SALEM ADOPTS LINCOLN
T
HE most unique, and I am inclined to believe the most
popular, monument that ever will be erected to Abraham
Lincoln, is the restoration of the town of New Salem on the
Sangamon River, in Menard County, Illinois, the town to
which Lincoln came back in July, 1831, to take a position
as clerk in a grocery store. Here he spent the six years
following his arrival-years of liveliest intellectual and social
activity-here he discovered that he had a power over men
which could be utilized to further his natural ambition for
public life-here he definitely decided to make a profegsion
of the law-here there came to him the deepest love and the
greatest sorrow of his life.
It was a town of short life-this New Salem-short, but
colorful. Founded in 1829, it thrived amazingly for seven
or eight years; then, as quickly as it had sprung into life, it
dropped out. In a dozen years it was a deserted village; one
by one all but one or two of its cabins were carried away, and
the little that was left crumbled to dust. For forty years New
Salem was only a rough cow pasture.
But it was an unforgettable spot. Here Abraham Lincoln
had lived for six years, and here was the scene of a hundred
episodes of his life-grave and gay. In New Salem he had
found himself-and men had found him. The memory of
his life there had become the great romance of Menard County,
and a few years ago descendants of the very people who had
made New Salem began to talk of its restoration. Out of the
[169]
gradually growing interest there arose what was called "The
Old Salem Lincoln League," committed to rebuilding the
village.
The idea captiv/ated the imagination not only of Menard
County but of the state. What a monument, not only to
Abraham Lincoln, but to their own heroic pioneers! Fittingly
enough, the leaders and backers in this undertaking were of
the town of Petersburg, two miles up the Sangamon-a town
born after New Salem, and really born to absorb it.
A more rewarding site than New Salem for such an under-
taking as that of the league could not be imagined. It lies
along the top of a bluff, a hundred feet or more high, a seg-
rnent of the long chain of bluffs that in past centuries the
Sangamon River has worn out of the soft Illinois soil. The
land rises sharply from the river bank, a highway at its foot,
and spreads back into wide prairies. From the top one looks
to-day over a long winding stretch of the river, over broad
plains, and north, south, and east upon segments of bluffs like
that on which the town was set, all heavily timbered-white
limbed sycamores along the river, maples, locusts, beeches,
oaks on the hillsides. Sixteen miles in a straight line to the
east the dome of the capitol at Springfield is visible-a lovely
picture, awakening an involuntary comparison to the scene
from the height at Mt. Vernon.
As a first step toward the permanent remaking of New
Salem which it dreamed, the league decided on a pageant as
its contribution toward the Illinois centennial of 1918-a
pageant rehearsing Lincoln's life in the town. It began its
work in the rough field at the top of the bluff-a field now
a tangled bed of prairie grass and underbrush. The first
investigations were more rewarding than had been expected
-a little cutting and digging revealed depressions, founda-
tion stones, walls, the tracks of old roads, until soon-to the
[170]
joy of the league-they had New Salem plotted .more per-
fectly than most of them had dreamed it ever could be. The
windings of the roads, the location of the tavern, of the stores
and houses in which Lincoln had worked and lived, the
position of the dam where he had made his first dramatic
appearance-these things fixed upon, log cabins were quickly
erected, and in September of 1918 the pageant was given.
It caught attention, stirred interest far and wide, doing
not only what the devoted and enthusiastic group hoped it
might do, but much more. The state itself was not slow in
seeing that Menard County had a big and beautiful idea,
and it has given since full backing to the plan of permanent
restoration of the town, acquiring most, if not all, of the land
needed for a complete piece of work. It has built, too, on
the bluff overlooking the river, a small but most attractive and
satisfactory museum in which a collection of Lincoln and
pioneer relics is growing healthily. It is not going to be
very long-possibly before the end of the present year-when
the entire town will be reproduced in solid timber and accord-
ing to carefully worked out specifications. It is hoped to
furnish cabins, shops and mills as they were in 1831. Luckily,
not a few original articles are to be had in Menard County
itself.
When a New Salem stands again complete on its bluff
overlooking'the Sangamon River, the six happiest and most
fruitful years Abraham Lincoln had spent up to this point
in his life will lie before us more truthfully and vividly than
pen or brush could ever reproduce them. One can see the
town into which he walked that July day in 1831, see the
store in which he was to work, the mill over which he was
to preside, the homes of the friends he so readily made.
New Salem when Lincoln first found it was only two years
old, but in those two years it had gathered a population of
[171]
something like a hundred people and had, scattered up and
down its one long street, between twenty and twenty-five
cabins of varying size-from the big, two story, doubled-
roomed tavern down to a tiny 8 ft. x 12 ft. bachelor quarters.
The group of people, taken _as a whole, which Lincoln now
joined, was altogether the most substantial, the widest awake
and the most cultivated with which he had so far been asso-
ciated. Take James Rutledge, the owner of the mill and
also of the tavern on the hill. Here was a man of the famous
Rutledge family, who, with his wife, had first come into the
Illinois country from Kentucky a dozen years earlier, and
had prospered there. He had a large family of fine children
-ambitious, upright, generous people, the Rutledges. Take
the Rev. John Cameron, James Rutledge's partner in the
mill. He was a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, devout,
courageous, and with an eye to sound business-the kind of
man that everybody respected and listened to. Born in
Kentucky, he and his wife had moved to Illinois in 1815, and
in 1829, when he and Rutledge decided that they wanted a
mill at a particular bend in the Sangamon River, he had
taken land on the bluff above the spot and incorporated the
town of New Salem, with the results we have seen. Then
there was a young man of parts, around Lincoln's age, Samuel
Hill, a storekeeper, an all-around good citizen. There was
Dr. John Allen, who attended to spiritual as well as physical
wants, running a Sunday school and temperance society.
There was a school teacher, one Mentor Graham of good mind
and acquirements, intent on seeing that the children of New
Salem did not grow up ignorant, and fostering every spark of
interest in knowledge that he found.
Already the little town was something of an industrial
center. There was a blacksmith, a tinner, a cooper, a wheel-
wright, a weaver, a hatter-industries carried on on the
[172]
premises where the craftsmen lived. They had a large, fairly
prosperous section to serve, for, in the dozen years since the
first settlers had come, some of them had already taken strong
hold-men like Squire Coleman Smoot, who lived across the
river, and in time built up a great fortune; men like Squire
Bowling Green and James Short, successful farmers already.
But the New Salem into which Lincoln came in 1831 had
not only its substantial, decent people, interested in building
up an orderly community and educating its children-the
ambition of its boys and girls was already stirring to get a
year or more in the academy at Jacksonville, thirty miles
away-it had, like every pioneer settlement, a boisterous,
sporting element. A little way outside of the town, and
using it as their market and trading place, there was a settle-
ment called, from its founder, one of the first to come into
the country, Clary's Grove. The young men of this neighbor-
hood had banded themselves into what we would call to-day
a gang, a group of as ingenious and reckless rowdies as ever
enlivened and terrified a countryside. Mr. Herndon, who
knew them first hand, declares that they were as generous
as they were riotous; but it is not their generosity which
figures in tradition.
One of the Clarys from the settlement had a grocery in
New Salem, not on the main street, but, as the map in the new
museum shows, around a bend in the road, bringing it
directly above the dam and effectively concealing it from
the town proper. Whisky was the chief stock in Clary's
grocery, it is said. The place had come to be a rendezvous
for all that was rough in the countryside-here horse races
began and ended, and h ~ regularly cock fights and gander
pulling went on. To this store, night after night, after the
day's work was done, the Clary Grove boys made their way,
racing down the half-mile street of New Salem, whooping
[173]
and shouting, terrifying the children and making all good
citizens shake their heads.
As chance had worked it, the store of which Lincoln
was to take charge was not in the main part of the town, but
directly above the mill dam, side by side with Clary's grocery,
and across the street from the cock pit. The nearness was
such that inevitably Lincoln was forced almost at the start
of his life in the town to settle on his relations to the Clary
Grove boys. He could join the gang; he could withdraw
from them and become their butt; but he did neither. By
his superior skill in their favorite game of wrestling, he
defeated their champion, and, by his fierce indignation and
severe punishment when that champion tried to trick him, he
won their whole-hearted admiration as well as a half-awed
respect. His popularity with them only grew as time went
on. The episode is significant. It shows the kind of a man
he had come to be-one that could live among rowdies, beat
them at their own game, walk untouched by their excesses and
meannesses and yet be an acceptable, unquestioned umpire of
their sports, already a self-directing human being, understand-
ing and sympathizing with weaknesses and able' to discrimi-
nate between weaknesses and meannesses, good intentions and
malice, a man who could put up with idle, rough, drinking
and adventuring men so long as they neither lied nor tricked
nor practiced cruelty. Let them do that and they found
quickly how heavy his blow, how stern his temper.
If Lincoln established his ascendency at the start with
the lower half of New Salem, he was no less successful with
the upper half. The good citizens of the town discovered
quickly that here was a young man who was as ready with
words, and even with pen, as he was with his fists, who fitted
in, took hold, wherever there was anything going on; thus
it happened that the returns of the first election held in
[174]
New Salem after his coming to the town are in his hand.
They found he had a deep interest in politics, was informed,
read the newspapers, could debate the issues of the day,
national as well as local, was not afraid of discussion, of
challenging an opinion, a fact, or of accepting correction.
More than politics interested him. There was religion, and
they found that in the continuous debate on the evidences
and doctrines and practices of Christianity that divided the
evenings on the doorsteps or around the stove in the grocery
store with local gossip and politics, Lincoln was sure to take
a serious and thoughtful part.
He soon knew everybody, knew their intellectual resources,
and availed himself of them. His headquarters, of course,
were his grocery store and the mill on the stream below, which
Denton Offutt had leased and put in his charge-wonderful
centers for acquaintanceship when a man had the genius for
companionship that this young man had. The traders that
came in from the country round, men like Squire Smooth and
Squire Bowling Green and James Short, the prosperous men,
listened to him, sized him up, and went home to repeat what
he had said and comment, as men had in Macon County and
back in Indiana, that here was somebody "different," some-
body that was worth keeping an eye on.
That is, in a very few months after his appearance in
New Salem, this chance young man had built up a following,
was everybody's friend and had made everybody his friend.
His following was on a solid basis, too, born of their liking
and respect. Somehow he had contrived to meet every man
on his own ground, establish a point of contact and interest
with him. He liked them all and liked them for what was
decent and natural and interesting in them. He already was
the man of the White House.
Lincoln sensed his popularity in New Salem, knew men
[175]
liked him, saw that they listened to his views, respected his
integrity. Why not capitalize his popularity'? He was
ambitious to be a public man. Was there anybody in the
neighborhood more fit than he for public office'? Did he not
understand the pith of the matters to be handled as well as
those about him'? He thought so. Did he not hold the public
good above his own advancement, and was not that the heart
of the matter, after all'? If these people whom he had won so
solidly would back him, why should he not venture'? There
you have the young pioneer American, confident that whatever
there is to be done he can learn to do in the doing-the in
evitable product of the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution!
By this time Lincoln had made his way with the school
teacher, Mentor Graham, as he had with all the rest of the
town, and he discussed with him going into public life.
Probably he said to the school teacher about what later he
wrote into his first political address: "Every man," he says
there, "is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be
true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great
as that of being truly esteemed by my fellow men by render-
ing myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed
in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed."
Graham, having some sense of the limitations of the young
man, particularly of the handicap his handling of English
would be when he came to be placed side by side with men
who had had the advantages of the schools, suggested grammar
to him. We can read between the lines that Lincoln's verbs
and nouns did not always agree, that he spoke of ''that there
grub-hoe" and "them fellers." The significant thing of the
episode is his immediate response to the suggestion, his ability
quickly to take a hint, and never to resent it; his willingness
to make a supreme effort, to sacrifice, labor to the point of
[176]
weariness, to add something to his equipment. And so he
studied granunar, borrowing his book, the only one in the
neighborhood. Kirkham's Grammar it was; and the fact that
in the winter of 1831-1832, down in New Salem, Illinois,
Abraham Lincoln put in weeks of day and night labor over
this book, gives Kirkham's Grammar, which, in the natural
course of things, would have passed out of history forever, a
permanent place on its page!
It is consoling that it is so good a book. Twenty-five
years ago J. McCan Davis of Springfield, Illinois, who was
s ~ i s t i n g me in gathering pictures and verifying data for a
life of Lincoln on which I was working, ran down the very
copy which Lincoln studied. At that time it was in Dakota,
owned by . a descendant of James Rutledge, coming to him
by a course of events which belong to a later chapter in
our story.
Recently Miss Jane Hamand, the donor of the Lincoln
collection housed in the public library of Decatur, of which
I have already spoken, has secured the book for exhibition.
I hope it means a permanent place in the Decatur Lincoln
'room. Certainly it will never anywhere have better care or
be shown with greater pride. It was in this collection that
last year I first went over Lincoln's copy of Kirkham's
Grammar-went over it page by page, with a lingering hope
that I might find somewhere a line in Lincoln's hand, but
never was a book, although studied by many different people,
more respectfully treated. There is not a written word in
Lincoln's or anybody else's hand, aside from those on the title
page and cover.
I suspect that a modern teacher would laugh at Kirk-
ham's Grammar, and the "systematic order of parsing" which
its author presents as a proof that he has done what no
previous grammarian had ever been able to do. Whether
[177]
that is so or not, I confess I found the book not only entertain-
ing but highly stimulating. I really think Samuel Kirkham
was justified in claiming that his grammar would "accelerate
the march of the juvenile mind in its advance in the path
of science by dispersing those clouds which so often bewilder
it, removing those obstacles that ordinarily retard its prog-
ress," that it would "render interesting and delightful a study
which has hitherto been considered tedious, dry and irksome."
He does it by an extreme conciseness of definition, a wealth
of easily understood illustration, plenty of exercises in false
syntax, and every now and then a paragraph of good advice
to the student, such as:
"You will now please read this lecture" (Kirkham's Grammar is
divided into lectures instead of chapters) "four times over, and read
closely and carefully Exercise a little sober thought, five minutes
spent in reflection are worth whole days occupied in careless reading."
What could you have better'? Kirkham's Grammar was
an excellent self-teacher, just the kind of a book for a young
man of Lincoln's meager schooling and desultory reading. He
carne out from it with an ability to make nouns and verbs
agree--indeed, to handle his "parts of speech" with a high
degree of success. But the great thing it did for him, I
imagine, was to show him the value of systematized knowl-
edge of a subject. He must have found a real intellectual
satisfaction in the clearness, the logical sweep, the orderliness
of the matter in the book. He had read widely, far more
widely, I am convinced, than we can prove; he had reflected
much; but his mind was full of unrelated information. And
it was a mind with a necessity for having things in their
places, of seeing relations-a necessity, too, for expressing
those relations so that he could get over to others what he
thought and felt about them. He had come to this point
when he took up this simple, practical, serious discussion of
[178]
Samuel Kirkham's; and I . think there is no doubt that it gave
him a sense of the possibilities in study which he had never
fully grasped before. It was a sense expressed in his com-
ment when he had mastered the book : "Well, if that's what
they call a science, I think I will try another." A great
intellectual discovery, you see.
His resolve to capitalize his popularity and this prepara
tion he had been making in study, crystallized in February of
1&32 in his first public document-indeed, the first written
thing that we have from his pen, announcing himself as a
candidate for the Illinois Assembly. It is his thinking on
public affairs and his manner of expression that are really
important about this document, outside of the fact, of course,
that "humble Abraham Lincoln," as he calls himself in the
announcement, should have had the audacity to plunge into
a world that was unknown to him and for which, as he him-
self realized, he had so little preparation.
He wasted no time in attacking the "issue," which, in his
judgment, was the vital one at the moment: "Easier means
of communication" for the County of Sangamon. Reluctantly
he argued that railroads and canals were not for them. His
objection was "paying for them, and the objection arose from
the want of ability to pay." He rehearsed a project then
under consideration for a railroad from Springfield to Jack-
sonville, and argued that the estimated cost, some $290,000,
caused what he called a "heart-appalling shock." There was
nothing for their "infant resources" but improvement of the
Sangamon River. Here he was at home; here he argued from
his personal adventures and observation on the stream, and
came out with a plan which is practically the same that is
being applied today, over ninety years after the appearance of
his "announcement," in more than one of the Middle West
states.
[179]
Briefly, what Lincoln proposed was that the channel of
the Sangamon between New Salem and Beardstown should
be straightened: by damming the river at the upper end
of the great bends and then cutting straight through the
sod of the prairie a shallow channel which the water itself
would in a short time, he believed, sufficiently deepen. One
of the great difficulties in the navigation of the Sangamon
was the enormous amount of drift timber which piled up
at every bend, damming the water and making a passage im-
possible. This drift, Lincoln believed, would be carried
swiftly down stream if once the channel was straightened.
Above New Salem there were numbers of short loops in the,
river which he proposed also to cut off.
There was no doubt about the common sense of the plan,
that every one who saw his announcement agreed. Here was
a young man, they said, that based what he had to say on
serious observation; it was not merely political palaver; it
was good and practical suggestion.
As for the writing, taking the as a whole, it
shows that Lincoln had already begun to sense the difference
between imitative and personal expression, that he was already
struggling to make words say what was in his mind; that
clearness, making others understand, was the aim he had in
wnt1ng. This document of his shows very little effort at
fine writing, has few phrases that would be called purely
conventional, things said in the way he had heard other people
say them. He is still a little awkward, not entirely free with
words. Probably he was considerably under the influence
of Mentor Graham, who no doubt labored with him over the
document, though I suspect that aside from verbal changes
that Graham may have suggested, there is very little in this
first piece of writing that we have of Lincob:i's that is not
his own. We must admit that it is a fine showing for a
[18o]
pioneer boy of twenty-three, whose schooling, all told, had
been less than a year, and whose strong and willing hand
had been busy almost daily since he was eight years old with
the ax and the grub-hoe, not with the pen.
Outside of transportation, the main subject he considers
at length in his announcement is the exorbitant interest rates
which were common in those days. With that characteristic
frankness which so often impelled him to do what in later
years his friends called "giving his case away," he emphasized
his advocacy of a law fixing the limits of usury by saying
that in case of extreme necessity there could always be means
found to cheat the law! There is significance in his frank-
ness; if he is going to frame a law with a loophole in it, a
place of escape, he is not going to pretend that there is no
such opening there. He is going to tell you in advance exactly
what is in his mind. That is, here is no political dissembler,
hypocrite; on the contrary, a youthful politician, both canny
and honest.
Confident and bold as the address is in the main, it is
quite evident that he put it out with more or less mis-
givings; his humility, his constitutional sense of inferiority,
comes out at the end. "I was born and have ever remained
in the most humble walks of life," he said. "I have no
wealthy or popular relations or friends to recommend me.
. . . If the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep
me in the background, I am too familiar with disappointment
to be very much chagrined," a combination of humility and
philosophy which attended him to the end of his days.
It was in March that his address went out to his fellow
citizens; but before he had time to follow it up, all Illinois
was plunged into the excitement of an Indian war. Instead
of campaigning, as he had expected in the spring and summer
of 1832, Lincoln joined the state militia that was preparing
[181]
to chase the Indian chief, Black Hawk, and his followers, out
of the Rock River country in the northwestern part of the
state. According to the arrangement of Black Hawk and
his people with the government of the United States, they
had the right to hunt and raise corn in this district until
it was surveyed and sold to settlers. Squatters had invaded
the territory. Black Hawk felt that his rights were being
disregarded, and decided to evict the trespassers. Hence the
call to evict him. .
Lincoln did not hesitate. He enlisted with all the young
men of his neighborhood.
[182]
XV
FEELING HIS WAY
0
NE who attempts to follow the footsteps of Abraham
Lincoln through his three months of soldiering in the
Black Hawk War has before him as pretty a historical pil-
grimage as he can ask. Students have charted the roads,
marked not a few of the important points and here and there
a monument has gone up, particularly impressive being Lorado
Taft's heroic Black Hawk on the bluffs of the Rock River.
Captivating as the pilgrimage is, however, Lincoln's
experience in the Black Hawk War cannot be regarded as of
great importance in his development. For him it was largely
a frolic-a frolic with much real physical hardship and no
great satisfactions either in service rendered or adventures
encountered-nothing in it that in the future he could do
more than laugh at-as he did once in Congress. He was
ridiculing Lewis Cass' war record. "By the way, Mr.
Speaker," he said, "do you know I am a military hero'? In
the days of the Black Hawk War I fought, bled and came
away. I had a good many bloody struggles with the
mosquitos, and although I never fainted from loss of blood,
I can truly say I was often hungry .... If they should ever
take me up as a candidate for the presidency, I protest they
shall not make fun of me as they have of General Cass by
attempting to write me into a military hero."
Yet, if there are no great pages in his three months' cam
paigning, if he himself laughed at them, there was abundant
excitement and color. It must have been an animated morning
[183]
in New Salem when the Governor's handbills, calling for
volunteers, were scattered; and there must have been much
lively badinage as well as suppressed forebodings as the
volunteers cleaned their muskets and the women poured
bullets for them. The march to Beardstown, the place of
rendezvous, the quick organization, his own election as captain
of a company-all this was stirring. And the last something
more-deeply satisfying. If he was popular enough for these
men to take him as a leader, was it not a sign that he might
win out in the election for the assembly, for which, as we
have seen, he had already announced himself'? It was a good
omen. Men did esteem him-that thing which he wanted
so much.
The Illinois Volunteers, of which Lincoln's company was
a part, made their way from Beardstown, up the old Indian
trail on the east bank of the Mississippi, to a point not far
from the present city of Rock Island. Here they were sworn
into the Federal service. To-day this gathering place of the
volunteers is known as Lincoln Camp. There were many men
in that motley group far more conspicuous at the time than
he-there were regular army lieutenants and colonels on the
ground, but it is not the name of any one of them which is
given to the place. And this is true from one end to the other
of the route he and his men took.
"That's the trail Lincoln followed on his way to fight
the Indians," old men told Mr. John Hauberg who personally
has traced all of the Indian trails spreading from Black
Hawk's village, and whose findings have been published by
the Illinois State Historical Society. A conspicuous tree mark-
ing the route they call Lincoln's Tree-the point on the Rock
River where he was nearly eaten by mosquitos, a point which
he himself fixed-is locally famous. "Lincoln camped here,"
"Lincoln marched by here," they tell you the length of the
[184]
.FEELING HIS WAY
march from the first camp, northwest to Dixon, north to the
scene of Stillman's defeat (May 15), where he saw the only
Indians of the whole campaign-dead Indians !-southeast to
Ottawa to be mustered out (May 27), and reenlisted (May
29) as a mounted ranger, northwest to Galena, considerably
over a hundred miles in a straight line, back to Ottawa again
to be mustered out on June 16 and mustered in again on
June 20, to Dixon, to Kellogg's Grove, back to Dixon,
then north to Turtle Village, now Beloit, Wisconsin, and
on to Lake Koshkonong; finally to be mustered out for good
and all at Burnt Village on the eleventh of July. Left high
and dry in southern Wisconsin, his horse stolen, he made his
way at fast as he could, on foot and by canoe, back to
New Salem.
It was experience, of course, stories and a setting for
stories which he used as long as he lived, but particularly
Lincoln carried out of this helter skelter Indian chasing an
enlarged know ledge of the kinds of men there are, and the
way they act under stress and strain. The entire youth of
Illinois had rushed into the Black Hawk War, some of them
to stay but a short time, many .of them to see the thing
through. Lincoln met many a man then with whom
he was to have relations of more or less value in later
days. Look over any one of the county histories of Illinois
and you will find proudly displayed rosters of those who
served in the Black Hawk War. A large number of these
were men with whom Lincoln was later to be associated in
the law or in politics. Not a few of them were to become
distinguished public servants.
As Lincoln never forgot anybody, and had an artist's sensi-
tiveness to the details of scenes, he used his contacts in the cam-
paign, even the slightest, to excellent purpose in the future.
"Major, do you remember ever meeting me before'?" he
[185]
asked Robert Anderson when, fresh from Fort Sumpter, he
came to report at the White House.
"No, Mr. President," Anderson replied.
"My memory is better than yours," Mr. Lincoln said,
"you mustered me into the service of the United States in
1832 in the Black Hawk War."
I don't know that he ever had a chance to tell Jefferson
Davis, Colonel Zachariah Taylor or Albert Sidney Johnston
that he once campaigned with them, but we may be sure that
if he had he took it. He missed no tie of that kind.
It was July when he walked into New Salem. His return
must have been a rare treat for his friends. The things that
he would tell them ! How he had to wear a wooden sword
for a day because he had fired his gun within the confines of
the camp, of the great men he had seen, of the tales he had
heard. He could tell them, too, about the event of the war
which stirred the whole country more than any other single
incident-the carrying off by the Indians in May of Rachel
and Silvia Hall, two girls fifteen and seventeen, who had seen
fifteen of their relatives and friends killed at their side, but
who had themselves been saved as brides for young chiefs.
For ten days these two girls had been hurried westward, and
then, through the efforts of the Indian agent and friendly
Winnebagos, had been bought off at the price of forty horses.
We can be sure the story lost nothing in Lincoln's telling.
Looking for traces of the war in the letters and speeches
of his later life, it is interesting to find that the very first
letter that we have of his, though not, of course, the first
he wrote, came out of this war. It is an amusingly frank
statement of an incident, showing how little real respect the
volunteers-Lincoln included-had for military rule. He
had been asked about the transfer and discharge of one
David Rankin.
[t86]
FEELING HIS WAY
"The transfer of Rankin from my company occurred as follows-
Rankin having lost his horse at Dixon's ferry, and having acquaintance
in one of the foot companies who were going down the river was
desirous to go with them, and one Galishen being an acquaintance
of mine and belonging to the company in which Rankin wished to
go wished to leave it and join mine, this being the case, it was agreed
that they should exchange places and answer to each other's names-
as it was expected we all would be discharged in very few days."
Lincoln's reason for hurrying back after his final muster-
ing out was that the election came off on August 6, and at
best it was going to give him scant time for campaigning.
He did only a little, but that little shows better than his
announcement that he stood squarely for the Whig doctrines
of the period: "I am in favor of a national bank. I am
in favor of the internal improvement system and a high pro-
tective tariff"-a "loose constructionist" at the start, you see.
He was defeated. However, "this was the only time
Abraham was defeated on a direct vote of the people," he
says rather boastingly in his third person autobiography. His
vote was not bad, all things considered. And he knew it.
He had 277 votes out of the 284 that were cast in his
precinct!
But there was something more important than politics
for him at the moment, and that was to find something to do.
Offutt's store had failed. It looks as if soldiering and the
political ambitions of his clerk had had something to do with
the failure. There is no doubt that Lincoln realized that it
was high time to find something he could stick to. For the
first time in his life, so far as I know, he thought of a trade-
blacksmithing. At the west end of the street there was a
village smithy. The man who kept it had a brother-in-law
living in the same house, one Jack Kelso, a crony of Lincoln's
-a treasured crony, for Kelso, fisherman and idler that' he was,
had books, knew Shakespeare and Bums, and was always
[187]
ready to read and quote and discuss with Lincoln. The black-
smith wanted an assistant. It might be a good thing to learn
a trade and settle down-near Jack Kelso!
But a big ambition that he hardly dared entertain stood
in the way of his committing himself. Just when he began
to dream of the law, we do not know; but that it was earlier
than this is certain. He was thinking seriously this fall and
regretfully telling himself that it would never do for him to
undertake it, that he had not enough education. Please note
that the lack of education did not stand in the way of his
offering himself as a legislator ! But that was different, to
his mind. In politics it was man to man; in the law there
was something intervening between men of which he stood
in awe-books, learning, standards for which he had rever-
ence but of which he had little understanding. No, it was
not for "humble Abraham Lincoln" to think of reading law.
While hesitating over the problem, taking any odd job
that came his way, a chance to buy a New Salem store pre-
sented itself. He had no money, but he had something in
which New Salem had come profoundly to believe, and that
was almost quixotic honesty!
When the owners of a dying mercantile establishment
found he was willing to take half of it off their hands, they
jumped at the offer; and so, a few months after he came back
from the war he found himself in a general store, a stock of
old goods on his hands, and with him, as a partner, an ineffec-
tive chap by the name of Berry, of good family, the son of a
local minister, but too fond of drink.
Very soon after the firm of Berry & Lincoln came into
existence its field of effort was enlarged by the most rapid
and amusing bit of high finance the town ever saw. Across
from the Rutledge Tavern stood the store of Reuben Radford.
Radford sold groceries, and, like everybody else, whisky.
[188]
FEELING HIS WAY
The Clary Grove boys were among his customers, and one
day, when he was away, enraged by his clerk's refusal to sell
them more than the number of glasses to which the rule of
the place limited each man, they shot up the establishment,
smashed counters and barrels, broke in the windows and tore
off the doors. When Radford came back and viewed the
ruins he said in disgust that he would sell to the first bidder.
William Greene, better known as "Bill," was in the crowd.
"Four hundred dollars," said Greene.
"Done," said Radford. "It's yours."
Greene had no money, but he gave his note. Lincoln, who
was watching the performance, suggested to him that they
take an inventory. This was quickly done. It showed a
more valuable stock than Lincoln had supposed, and he and
Berry on the spot offered to assume the note Greene had given
and add $2oo (at least, authorities differ!) in cash (Berry's
cash) and a horse, saddle and bridle. Before night the ex-
change was made, and Berry and Lincoln promptly trans-
ferred the goods from their first store, and set up shop in alto-
gether the most convenient location for merchandising in the
town of New Salem.
The story goes that when, rather late that night, young
Greene went home, his father, who had heard rumors of the
young man's speculating, was waiting to give him a sound
berating. The boy said nothing, but sitting down in front
of the fire, waited until the verbal wrath of the old man was
exhausted. Then he began slowly counting out from his coat
pocket where he carried his $200 the coins, big and little, and
letting them ring on the fireplace hearth. The elder Greene
watched the growing pile in amazement, softening as he did
so. Finally he called: "Mother! Mother! Get up and get
Bill a good supper; he has had a hard day."
Berry and Lincoln had assumed a big debt. The store did
[189]
not prosper. How could it, with one man drinking and the
other with his head forever in a book'? They had a chance
to sell, and did so. But soon the purchasers disappeared,
leaving their debts to swell the previous pile. Berry died,
and the accumulation became Lincoln's burden-a burden
which he manfully assumed and finally discharged, though it
took him years.
This experiment as a merchant, which took up most of
Lincoln's time through the year 1833, played a part all out
of proportion to its real importance in his later political life,
for in 1858, at the first of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Mr.
Douglas dragged it in. He had first known Lincoln, he said,
when he was a "flourishing grocery keeper in the town of
Salem." "He could ruin more whisky," Douglas went on,
"than all of the boys in the town together." Over the reply
that Lincoln made to this political badinage a sharp discussion
arose.
"The judge is woefully at fault about his tale over Lincoln being
a grocery keeper," .he said. "I do not know as it would be a great
sin if I had been, but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery
anywhere in the world. .It is true that Lincoln did work the latter
part of one winter in a little still house up at the head of a hollow."
How do you explain it'? Well, in the first place, Lincoln's
store was not what, in the vernacular of the day, was called
a grocery. A grocery was nearer what we call a saloon. Even
if it had been, it certainly never was "flourishing," but I
hardly think that he would have fallen back upon quibbles
of that kind; rather that he was so irritated at Judge Douglas'
forcing him to spend time in answering personal charges that
he did not exercise his usual caution in reply. The debate was
altogether too serious a matter to Lincoln for him to have
patience with such a question as whether he did or did not once
keep a grocery.
[190]
FEELING HIS WAY
Out of this discussion came the question: If he kept a
store and not a grocery, did he sell liquor'? There is no doubt
that he did. There was no store of the day that did not have,
side by side with sugar and molasses barrels, a barrel of
FACSIMILE OF TAVERN LICENSE TAKEN OUT IN MARCH, 1833, BY BERRY AND
LINCOLN.
whisky. One must remember the practice and the point of view
in regard to whisky in those days, so utterly different from
to-day, and, indeed, what it was already becoming in 1858.
Nearly ten years after Lincoln had abandoned his mercantile
venture, he admirably described in a temperance speech that he
made in Springfield this practice and point of view:
"When all such of us as have now reached the years of maturity
first opened our eyes upon the stage of existence we found intoxicating
liquor recognized by everybody, used by everybody, repudiated by
nobody. It commonly entered into the first draught of the infant
and the last draught of the dying man. From the sideboard of the
parson down to the ragged pocket of the houseless loafer, it was
constantly found. Physicians prescribed it in this, that, and the other
disease; government provided it for soldiers and sailors; and to have
[191]
a rolling or raising, a husking or 'hoedown,' anywhere about without
it was positively insufferable. So, too, it was everywhere a respectable
article of manufacture and merchandise. The making of it was
regarded as an honorable livelihood, and he who could make most
was the most enterprising and respectable. Large and small manu
factories of it were everywhere erected, in which all the earthly goods
of their owners were invested. Wagons drew it from town to town;
boats bore it from clime to clime, and the winds wafted it from nation
to nation; and merchants bought and sold it, by wholesale and retail,
with precisely the same feeling on the part of the seller, buyer, and
bystander as are felt at the selling and buying of ploughs, beef,
bacon, or any other of the real necessaries of life. Universal public
opinion not only tolerated but recognized and adopted its use."
This quoted paragraph shows clearly enough how and
why Lincoln sold whisky in his store. But Mr. Douglas
was unfair-must have known he was unfair when he taunted
Lincoln with "ruining more liquor than all the boys of the
town together." That was never true. Lincoln never drank.
The traditions of New Salem are that he frequently remon-
strated with boys and young men that he thought in danger
of intemperate habits. The one temperance lecture of his
that we have, that delivered in 1842, from which I have
quoted above, gives up ample proof of his opinion of whisky
drinking and whisky selling:
"Whether or not the world would be vastly benefited by a total
and final banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks seems to me
not now an open question. Three-fourths of mankind confess the
affirmative with their tongues, and, I believe, all the rest acknowledge
it in their hearts."
He regarded the banishing of_ liquor as a revolution-a
beneficent revolution.
"If the relative grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the
great amount of human misery they alleviate, and the small amount
they infiict, then indeed will this be the grandest the world has
ever seen.
[192]
FEELING HIS WAY
"Of our political revolution of '76 we are all justly proud. It has
given us a degree of political freedom far exceeding that of any other
nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the
long mooted problem as to the capability of man to govern himself.
In it was the germ wliich has vegetated, and still is to grow and
expand into the universal liberty of mankind. But, with all these
glorious results, past, present, and to come, it had its evils too. It
breathed forth famine, swam in blood, and rode in fire ; and long,
long after the orphan's cry and the widow's wail continued to break
the sad silence that ensued. These were the price, the inevitable price,
paid for the blessings it brought.
"Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we shall find a
stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant
deposed; in it, more of want supplied, more disease healed, more
sorrow assuaged. By it no orphans starving, no widows weeping. By
it none wounded in feeling, none injured in interest; even the dram
maker and dram-seller will have glided into other occupations so
gradually as never to have felt the change, and will stand ready
to join all others in the universal song of gladness."
This ought to be answer enough to the bickering that
has gone on in recent years as to whether Lincoln himself
ever advocated prohibition. The fact that he undoubtedly
sold liquor in his general store in New Salem in 1833, that
he and his partner Berry took out a license to sell, that he
once worked in a distillery, may be used to confuse the dis-
cussion, but it cannot by any fair process of argument destroy
his position as an out-and-out believer in the wisdom of de
stroying the liquor business.
Lincoln never used liquor, he never used tobacco. A
few years ago I was appealed to by a Lincoln student who
had been told by a woman reared in Illinois and whose father
was a friend of Lincoln that she could never bear to hear his
name, that when he came as a visitor to her father's house she
always left the room because he was so filthy in his use of
tobacco, his face and clothes being stained with it. Firmly
convinced that the lady had confused visitors, I appealed to
[193]
friends of Lincoln still living in Illinois, among them Mr.
Roland W. Diller, the proprietor of a drug store on the
Square at Springfield, where for years Mr. Lincoln used to
drop in and sit for hours with friends and neighbors around
the drug store stove, swapping stories and discussing public
questions. "I would certainly have known it," Mr. Diller
wrote me, "with my intimate association with him. The lady
was surely mistaken." There were other letters, the most im-
portant of them from Mr. Robert Lincoln himself:
"My father never used tobacco in any form."
That is, the young man struggling in New a l e ~ to find
out what he could do, and also whether he dared try the thing
that he wanted to do, was clean in his habits. We can be
sure that in all New Salem at this time there were few like
him, few who did not have their tobacco and their glass of
something strong. Why, even the Rev. John Cameron kept
a barrel of whisky in his cellar !
Something was coming out of the struggle, however.
Gradually his dream of the law was taking body, materializ-
ing. He was getting nearer and nearer to it, though he hardly
knew it. It was he to whom people came now for advice when
they had legal documents to fill out, bills of sale to prepare,
bonds to give. On anything that required a legal tum, he
was consulted. He had become their postmaster, too, an
office that he could fill admirably in connection with the work
of his store, and which he was to hold as long as it continued
in the town. (The New Salem postoffice was discontinued
May 30, 1836, because of diminished receipts.) But, most
important of all, he was reading-reading Blackstone !
The story of the coming of the volumes into his hands,
gives one a vivid picture of the town, its location, its visitors.
The road from Springfield came up over the hill from the
south, joining the town's one long street directly in front of
[194]
FEELING HIS WAY
Lincoln's store. From there it turned westward to the prairies.
Over this road went migrating settlers. How often Lincoln
must have gone out to lend a friendly hand to somebody who
had broken down or was stuck in the spring or winter mud!
His kindliness brought him great reward, for in a barrel of
plunder which he had bought to relieve an overloaded set-
tler's wagon he found a full set of Blackstone-the first he
had ever seen.
From the day that he pulled the books out from the pile
of odds and ends which had been dumped into the barrel he
read them at every chance-read them when at leisure,
moiled over them when at work. How to get his hands on
something that would give him the few things he must have-
food and a roof to shelter him w\lile he studied! If he could
find a steady half-time job, then perhaps--
It came his way as the store was "winking out" and he
was looking for jobs of chopping wood or other labor. It
was probably late in the fall of 1833 that John Ca]houn
the surveyor of Sangamon County sent hir:n word that he
would like to depute him to assist him in his work in and
around New Salem. The chance was logical enough when
one remembers his reputation among his friends, but stirred
as a sympathic reader must be, by what seemed to be his
almost hopeless ambition, it comes like a gift from the gods.
What had happened was that friends of Lincoln who knew
Calhoun and knew that he was seeking a young man that
promised to have the makings of a surveyor in him, had told
him of Lincoln, his trustworthiness, likableness, know ledge.
Let him lay out their roads and towns and farms, and there
would be no come back-they knew Abraham Lincoln. It
was on the recommendation of his friends that Calhoun finally
appointed him.
Lincoln knew nothing of surveying, other than what every
[195]
woodsman knows-and that is considerable among the really
intelligent-but he accepted. And he also promptly made
sure that he was going to be able to keep his job, by hunting
up a copy of Flint & Gibson-the stand-by of surveyors in
those days-and mastering it. That done, his instruments
bought, and he was ready. It was like a fortune to him, work
at $3 a day, which kept his brain active, gave him a chance
to extend his acquaintance, to sound out public opinion-and
to read.
He was launched.
[tg6]
XVI
SURVEYOR, LEGISLATOR, LAW STUDENT
T
HE traditional occupation of impecunious young Amer
icans ambitious for an education and a profession in
Abraham Lincoln's early day, as in ours, was teaching. Not
a few of those who in the future were to be his political and
l ~ g l rivals and colleagues were at a teacher's desk in the years
he was doing manual labor and tinkering at storekeeping-
the most important among them being Stephen A. Douglas.
Lincoln, however, was too conscious of his own lack of school
ing, too doubtful of his store of knowledge, to think of teach-
ing. When it came to surveying, it was a different matter.
He knew he could make good at that; and when the appoint-
ment as a deputy surveyor in Sangamon County came to him
late in 1833, he took hold of the work with relish and energy.
The first certificate of a survey of his which I have seen
is one bearing the date of January, 1834, published many
years ago by Mr. Herndon. Here he laid out a piece of land
for a neighbor-a kind of work of which he was to do much
in years to come, work not paid for in money. Lincoln re-
ceived for this first survey two buckskins-something he prob-
ably needed, for he had them foxed on his trousers to protect
them from briers.
The territory assigned to him by the chief of the Land
Office was that part of Sangamon County lying in and around
New Salem. That is, he had work among people who knew
him. The whole section is sprinkled with reminiscences of
the comers he marked, the roads he ran, the towns he plotted.
[197]
It was he that surveyed the new road running from "Musick's
Ferry on Salt Creek," through New Salem out toward Jack-
sonville. It was he who plotted Petersburg, the town which
was shortly to absorb New Salem, root and branch. It was
1-
FACSIMILE OF A MAP AND REPORT OF A SURVEY MADE BY A. LINCOLN IN 1834.
he who fixed the corners of the land taken up by new settlers.
Drive to-day in any direction from New Salem, and you will
be told with pride, "Lincoln laid out this farm for my grand-
father"-"There's a stake that Lincoln drove"-"There's a
tree that Lincoln selected as a corner"-''This is Lincoln's
road"-"This is one of Lincoln's towns."
Offhand one would say that surveying was a pursuit in
[198]
which there would be little chance for personality to express
itself, but in Lincoln's case personality seems to have ruled
even his compass and chain. Edgar Lee Masters, in his biting
tale, "Mitch Miller," the scene of which is laid in Petersburg,
introduces an incident, showing the triumph of his heart over
his science. Miteh' s chum is talking:
"Look at this house partly in the street and look at the street
how it jigs. Well, Linkern did that. You see he surveyed this
whole town of Petersburg. But as to this, this is how it happened.
You see it was after the Black Hawk War in '36 and when Linkern
came here to survey, he found that Jemina Elmore, which was a
widow of Linkern's friend in the war, had a piece of land, and had
built a house on it and was livin' here with her children. And Linkern
saw if the street run straight north and south, a part of her house would
be in the street. So to save Jemina's house, he set his compass to
make the line run a little furder south. And so this is how the line
got skewed and leans this strip kind of irregular clear through the
town north and south. This is what I call makin' a mistake that is
all right, bein' good and bad at the same time."
My first thought on reading this incident was that it was
an invention of Mr. Masters; but in 1922 I looked up the
original survey in Petersburg-a clean, careful and well drawn
document. And there it was-a town veered a little out of
plumb in order to save trouble and expense to the widow of
a friend!
As a matter of fact, Lincoln found more opportunities
in his new calling than he ever had before in any connection,
to exercise a precious natural instinct very strong in him-
the instinct to help one whom he saw to be in need. I take
it that if we could have followed the young man from week
to week in his surveying we would have a big collection of
anecdotes of innate kindness. As it is, there are many. A
favorite one along the lower Sangamon is that of the service
he rendered a man who was to become one of the most pros-
[199]
perous and respected citizens of the county, Dr. Charles
Chandler.
Dr. Chandler had come into Illinois from Kentucky in
the spring of 1832, expecting to settle near Peoria. He ar-
rived with the Black Hawk War, and could go no further at
the moment than Beardstown. Looking about, he decided
to take up a tract on the lower Sangamon. The claim was
entered, a cabin built and cultivation begun. Busy with this
work, Dr. Chandler put off going to Springfield to prove up
his claim. Illinois at that time was alive with a pestiferous
tribe of land sharks, and one of these gentry, ostensibly a new
settler, had been befriended by Dr. Chandler. When he dis-
covered that the full requirements of the tract which the doc-
tor was developing had not been satisfied, he started for
Springfield with the intention of grabbing the entire quarter
section. When the news of this treachery came to the doctor,
he saw there was but one way to save his property; and that
was to head off the interloper. a ~ t i l y collecting the amount
of "land office money"-gold or silver coin was required-
he started on horseback for the county seat-a long and
tedious ride over the unbroken roads. When he was some ten
miles from the end of his journey, his horse began to show
signs of giving out. Just then a young man rode up, com-
mented on the condition of the animal, and asked why his
hurry. The doctor explained the situation, and the young
man, bounding down, said: "You take my horse; he's fresh.
Get there before that .rascal. I will follow and we will swap
back when I get to town." The exchange was made, and Dr.
Chandler hurried on, reaching the land office barely in time to
save his claim.
Many months later the doctor asked that a survey of his
land be made, and what was his surprise to find that the
deputy sent him for the job-Abraham Lincoln by name-
[2oo]
was the very young man whose friendly act had saved his
property.
Lincoln had never before made as much money as he did
now, for while there might be a good many jobs for which
he received produce-some of which he could use himself,
as the two buckskins mentioned above, some of which he
"traded in"-the county paid in cash $3 a day, with extras
for maps and diagrams-not extravagant extras certainly-
for road maps he received fifty cents! For a map of the town
of Albany, $2.50. How surprised he would be if he knew
that a day would come when many a collector would pay
a hundred times $2. so to own that map!
Surveying was an excellent occupation for Lincoln; it
gave him a chance to exercise his passion for precision-and
he was willing to take time to insure precision. He did not
like to guess, to decide until he was confident he was right.
It is said that no survey of his has ever been changed, though
I do not know this to be true. We do know, however, that
he steadily improved in map-making and in note-taking;
that a comparison of his maps and plans shows clearly-also
we know that his reputation for skill and accuracy became
such that he was sometimes sent for in disputes outside of his
territory. There was a corner in the northern part of Sanga-
mon County locally famous in the Civil War because it had
been fixed by Lincoln when called in as a referee. The care
with which he did the work seems to have stuck in the minds
of the neighborhood. He began by a resurvey of the whole
section. Finally he drove in his staff : "Here's your corner."
The disputants dug in and in a few minutes struck the original
stake, its pointed end resting on the piece of charcoal which it
was the custom of the ear 1 y surveyors to use.
Nearly twenty-five years after Lincoln laid aside his. sur
veying compass and chain, he was called upon by a convention
[201]
of surveyors who had gathered in Springfield to settle a
mooted point in regard to the act passed by Congress in 180 5
relating to surveys. Their selection was based not on the
fact that he was an able lawyer, but that he had been a prac-
tical surveyor and had never lost his interest in the science.
The opinion in Lincoln's own hand is in existence and was
published in facsimile some twenty years ago in the writer's
"Early Life of Lincoln."
It is quite unlikely that he had calls enough to keep him
continuously busy at this time; if he had half a month's work
he was probably doing well. But there is no doubt that as
things were now turning for him, that was all that he cared
for. His political ambition had revived. He sensed that the
popularity which had encouraged him to offer himself for the
assembly two years ago was stronger than ever. He had
worn well-improved on acquaintance. Moreover, now he
was "somebody." It was quite a different matter for a young
man who had a right to walk into the land office at Spring-
field-one of the staff-to offer himself as a candidate, than
it had been for the combined farm laborer, flatboatman and
hired store-keeper of 18.g2. There was every reason why he
should try it again.
Of course there were people to whom he seemed an un-
likely candidate. A man who was to become one of his very
good friends-Peter Wallace-later the Rev. Peter Wall ace,
D. D. of Chicago--told me once that in Springfield, where
he was living in 1834, there was much hooting at Lincoln's
ambitions. Wallace liked him, however, and voted for him;
and there were many others in the town who did the same.
There is not a word in existence, as far as I know, of the
platform on which he ran in 1834. None of his speeches have
been preserved, no significant anecdotes. Two things are
certain, however-he ran as a Whig, putting his emphasis on
[2o2]
internal improvements, particularly on the improvement of
the Sangamon River; and he was elected by . a substantial
majority.
The most important fruit of the campaign of 1834 was not
his election. It was his final decision that he could and would
FACSIMILE OF LEITER WRI'ITEN BY A. LINCOLN, POSTMASTER OF NEW
SALEM, ILLINOIS, FROM MAY, 1833, TO MAY, 1836, WHEN THE OFFICE
WAS DISCONTINUED.
make a lawyer of himself. On the stump with him was a
Springfield candidate, also a Whig, Major John T. Stuart.
Lincoln already knew something of Stuart, for the company
of which he had been captain in the first few weeks of the
Black Hawk War had belonged to Stuart's command. The
two men were thrown much together in the campaign and be-
came friendly. They were about of an age, though their
[203]
experience in life had been totally different. Stuart had had
"chances".-his father had been a Kentucky minister, a col-
lege professor; he himself was a college graduate who had
studied law, comfortably and properly in a Kentucky firm.
He had put out his shingle some time before in Springfield
and was already well established. His birth, his associations,
all his connections gave him a standing which Lincoln had
never known. In spite of these things, the two men became
good friends, and in their canvass Lincoln confided to Stuart
his ambition to became a lawyer and his doubts of having
sufficient education to justify him in undertaking the neces-
sary study.
Stuart evidently realizing that Lincoln already had not
only a fairly good start in the law, but excellent mental habits;
offered him books, laid out a course for him-it was the turn-
ing point. He saw his way at last. He would do it. That
is, he came out of the campaign of 1834 with his mind finally
made up. Now there was nothing to do but work. He need
no longer torment himself about his inability, his lack of
preparation-he was going ahead; and just as he had done
when he saw that a mastery of grammar was necessary to
the handling of English requisite for political life-just as
he had done when he saw that the mastery of Flint & Gibson
was necessary to hold his surveyor's job, he began immediately
the hard and systematic reading which must precede his ad-
mission to the bar.
He might have to ride twenty miles and back to get the
books in Springfield-but he is not to be pitied for that! He
had already developed habits of mind, methods of study
which made him practically unconscious of his surroundings.
He gathered up his material in moments of leisure, and on
his journeys to and from Springfield, to and from his sur-
veying jobs, he went over and over it, absorbing its m e ~ i n g
[204]
saturating himself with it. No possible leisure, or association,
no so-called advantage or opportunity could of itself have
carried him so far as this habit of concentration and assimila-
tion which he had worked out under the hard prod of necessity.
We can think of Abraham Lincoln by the fall of 1834,
then, as a cheerful and satisfied young man. He was on his
way, and he had the exCiting experience before him of a first
term in the Ninth Illinois Assembly.
It was December when he started for Vandalia, then the
capital. The town lay some seventy-five miles to the south
of Springfield, and then, as now, it was reached only by much
zig-zagging. In all probability Lincoln went by stage coach.
New Salem by this time was on a stage coach route. The
line ran from Springfield northwest to the Mississippi through
Monmouth. The trip took two full days and cost $g. By
taking this route to Springfield, Lincoln could catch the coach
south to Vandalia.
The state capital was not much to look at when Lincoln
saw it for the first time in 1834. He had of course seen real
cities-New Orleans, St. Louis, but Vandalia was the largest
town in which he had ever lived-a town about fifteen years
old, of probably not quite a thousand people-the court house
a two-story brick building without any architectural pre-
tension, its houses of worship still poor affairs, no great dwell-
ings-but yet a town which, because of the men that had
dominated it, had unmistakable distinction. Vandalia had
known several superior men. There was Ninian Edwards,
whom President Madison had sent to Illinois as its first terri-
torial governor, who later had been a United States Senator,
and after that Governor of the state. There was Edward
Coles, a gentleman if there ever was one, Governor from 1823
to 1826-the man who because of his hatred of slavery had
put fortune, position, comfort behind him, had brought his
[205]
slaves to Illinois, freed them and established them there, and
who had then put through the great fight to make the new
state free. Then there was John Reynolds, as virile and
picturesque a character as Illinois had known. The State
assembly had always others of fine caliber-men of French
descent and a touch of French cultivation-aspiring Ken
tuckians and Virginians, the best of timber.
As the terminus of the Cumberland Road, the only na-
tional highway westward, Vandalia had become a purchasing
center for the surrounding country. Capp's store made the
prices for all that part of the world, it was said, and had the
reputation of keeping everything. l n d e ~ d one of the favorite
bets with a newcomer was that he could not mention anything
that could not be found at Capp's. One newly elected as-
semblyman who had taken the bet asked for goose yokes. Mr.
Capp promptly appeared with one, saying that they always
kept them for legislators.
Vandalia had a sense of its dignity as capital of the state,
and, on the whole, was an orderly town. There were bound
to be fights, it said, philosophically, and provided for them
an institution known as the Bull Pen, where every one was
allowed to go and settle his difficulty without disturbing the
streets!
To Lincoln, fresh from New Salem, and its little group
of people, probably grown too familiar to be stimulating,
Vandalia, with its senate of 26, its assembly of 55, with its
Governor and official staff, with a crowd of lobbyists, with
the animated social life incident to even a pioneer capital,
was an exciting change. He came not as an outsider, but as
a recognized insider, a representative of one of the important
counties of the state, a county that everybody saw already
must be reckoned with.
Lincoln was too modest by nature, too conscious of his
[2o6]
own limitations, to force himself on the assembly. His ap-
proach was different. He had to know his ground, under-
stand his people, make up his mind, study the thing out be-
fore he would attempt to put himself forward. The result
is that we have a young legislator who does what he does very
quietly. .No speech of his is reported-no signs of leader-
ship show in the record. As a matter of fact, the two sessions
of the Ninth Assembly-one in the winter of 1834-35 and
an extra one called at the end of 1835-were given over
almost entirely to Lincoln's favorite topic of internal im-
provements; and most of the time of the legislators was de-
voted to making and passing bills for railroads, canals, roads
and bridges. There was little speech-making. The "heart
appalling shock" which Lincoln confessed the cost of rail-
roads gave him in 1832 seems to have entirely passed. The
Whigs had gone over to the railroad, and they plunged into
a scheme of development which takes one's breath away when
we remember that the financing of their magnificent scheme
must all be done on faith-faith largely in outside capital
flowing in to take bonds.
Lincoln's solution of the problem of financing the im-
provements was that the Federal Government turn back to the
states the proceeds of the sales of public lands. If this was
done, Illinois could dig its canals and build its railroads, with-
out borrowing money and paying interest on it. Although
there was little hope of this, he was no more reluctant than
his colleagues to go ahead with their schemes, without any
sure means of paying for them. The map of the developments
which they planned would be almost sufficient for Illinois
to-day, though it has some lacks that look curious to us now.
For instance, they ran a railroad straight north from Cairo,
with a terminus at Galena. No road to Chicago! Chicago's
western connection was a canal. The rivers were not neg
[207]
lected. They voted $ 5o,ooo for the improvement of the
Kaskaskia River on which Vandalia lay, though, as one dis-
gusted legislator declared, "Turtles have been known to have
run aground on that stream."
It was not only for the improvement of rivers and the
building of canals and railroads that this hopeful Ninth As-
sembly provided. It granted numbers of charters for private
undertakings, among them many toll bridges, some of which
possibly are still in operation. The second bill, indeed, that
Lincoln introduced was for one of these toll bridges-Musick' s
bridge across Salt Creek, destined to be long known to Illinois
travelers. It was to replace the ferry mentioned above in one
of his surveys. And then there were schools, academies and
colleges chartered, numbers of them. Transportation and edu-
cation-these were the needs of Illinois, these were the things
which the Ninth Assembly was encouraging, leaving it to luck,
private initiative and the lure which the new land might have
for investors for the m ~ n y to pay for them.
If Lincoln's career as a legislator began modestly, it is
certain he got his feet firmly on the ground in his first term. He
learned the ways, he studied the men, he grew in confidence and
directness-the last comes out interestingly in the hand bill
he sent out in 1836, announcing his candidacy for a second
term. Compare this document with the one he distributed in
1832, and you find him firmer in expression, more willing to
present himself in few words, no longer feeling it necessary
to apologize for himself as he did at the start.
The practical point in the little document is his reiteration
of his idea of how money should be secured, in part at least,
for all their fine undertakings-good Whig doctrine-the pro-
ceeds of the sales of public lands. There is one general propo-
sition which smacks of buncombe, though I have no doubt Lin-
coln really meant it: "If elected I shall consider the whole
[2o8].
people of Sangamon my constituents, as well those that oppose
me as those that support me." One has heard the phrase re-
peated so regularly since Lincoln's day and has seen it so rarely
applied that one instinctively revolts against putting the words
into his mouth.
One short paragraph in this two hundred word announce-
ment card has kept it alive and in the last few years
has been constantly quoted in political campaigns, that is the
one in which he lays down his notion of popular suffrage.
So far as I know it is his only expression on the subject:
"I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist
in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to
the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms" (by no means ex-
cluding females).
A suffrage only to those who pay or serve, is what it
amounts to.
On the above platform Lincoln was elected in the summer
of 1836 to his second term in the Illinois assembly.
He was not to go back to Vandalia, however, with the
light and confident heart that he carried in 1834. True, he
was further along in his public and professional ambitions, he
had made great strides in his law reading, he had begun to
see the end, to be sure that he would be admitted. He knew
he was solid with his constituents, and probably could be
reelected as often as he might want, but his heart was heavy
within him.
A singular feature of the frank and voluminous remi-
niscences we have of Lincoln's life in New Salem from 1831
to 1834 is that none of them recall any intimacy or even
companionship with the young girls of the town and country-
side. Back in Indiana his acquaintances remembered that he
"liked" little Kate Roby. Down at Anderson's ferry on the
Ohio they told how he gave a friend a scar "for life" in a
[209]
quarrel over a girl to whon1 he had paid attention. In Macon
County, Illinois, there are detailed traditions of his courting
two young women in 1830 and '31 and wanting to marry both
of them! Yet in New Salem, for nearly three years there
seems to have been no one to whom he was so attracted that his
sharp-eyed friends remarked it; and you may be sure they
would have seen and remembered if there had been such a one.
It is not credible that through these years Lincoln was
indifferent to women. I doubt if ever there was a time of his
life when he was not keenly conscious of them, drawn to
them. The truth undoubtedly is that on his coming to New
Salem he was deeply stirred by a young woman of the town
who he knew to be engaged to another man. It was not until
1834 that she was free and that he finally won her. There
is no doubt that she was the first woman he had loved, the
only one who ever brought him romance.
[210]
XVII
ANN RUTLEDGE
N
O episode in Abraham Lincoln's life has been more
maltreated than that of his love and loss of Ann Rut-
ledge. It was his first romance-his only real romance. It
was cut short by the death of the girl, and there is no doubt
that he was shaken to the very core by his grief-no doubt
that his whole life was affected by the blow. But as the story
has grown in repeated tellings, it has become largely a study
in morbidity. On one side it pictures a young girl who knew
her heart so poorly that after accepting Lincoln she never
gave him a full, free love, but so tormented herself with
thoughts of one to whom she had earlier pledged herself, and
who had not only deceived her as to his very name, but had
apparently deserted her, that she brought on a brain fever
from which she died. On the other side, we have a young man
so poorly balanced mentally that for weeks after his loss
he walks on the edge of insanity-unfit to care for himself,
wandering at night about the country, muttering incoherent
laments.
One cannot be too thankful that the work of recent Lin-
coln lovers has cleared this romance of the clouds of turgid
sentiment that have enveloped it and brought out firmly and
finally, I hope, its simple, touching lines.
Thanks to those who are restoring the town of New Salem
and getting together there a pioneer museum of which Lin-
coln and Ann Rutledge are the center, thanks to Jane
Hamand, of Iowa, who has made a specialty of Rutledge his
tory in the choice Lincoln collection she has donated to
[211]
Decatur, Illinois, we have material for that authentic setting
which always does so much to give reality and naturalness to
any human drama.
I hold, however, as most important in clearing the story
of its morbid streaks, the chapter on Ann Rutledge in Henry
B. Rankin's "Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln,"
published in 1916. No one who has written of the two young
people had a better opportunity to know the truth of their
relationship than Mr. Rankin-no one by temperament,
dignity of thought and feeling, carefulness of expression has
been better prepared to tell what he knew. Mr. Rankin's
mother, though some years older than Ann Rutledge, was not
only her teacher and friend, but her confident at the time
of her engagement to Mr. Lincoln. Henry Rankin, born in
1837, thus knew the story first hand from an intelligent,
cultivated woman, of whose father's family, as later of her
husband's family, Lincoln was a friend.
Mr. Rankin himself grew up in Petersburg, played as a
boy around the fast disappearing cabins of deserted New
Salem, went to the court house when Lincoln was there to see
and hear him, and through all his youth heard his family and
neighbors go over their recollections of the early days and
Lincoln's part in them. When he was about twenty-one years
of age he went into the office of Lincoln and Herndon in
Springfield, and for four years was more or less constantly
associated with the firm .
.. ..c\mong the treasured possessions in Mr. Rankin's care-
fully chosen Lincoln library is a worn book, inscribed on its
front covfr "Autographs." The very first of the collection
is that of Abraham Lincoln.
"Today, F ~ b 23, 1858, t h ~ owner honored me with the privilege
of writing t h ~ first name in this book.
"A. LINCOLN."
[212]
ANN RUTLEDGE
Mr. Herndon, Mr. Lincoln's partner, wrote at the same
time the lines below. I do not know of any minor document
which shows more clearly the difference in the two men:
"The struggles of this age and succeeding ages for God and man
-Religion-Humanity and Liberty with all their complex and grand
relations-may they triumph and conquer forever, is my ardent wish
and most fervent soul-prayer.
"WM. H. HERNDON.
"Feb'y 23d, 18 58."
Mr. Rankin later became a banker in Petersburg, and
there, some forty years ago, was stricken with myalgia
which has kept him on his back all the years since. Of a
cheerful and courageous spirit, he accepted his physical handi-
cap and has led a life not only of remarkable business activity
-he has multiplied his estate by five and given a college
education to his three children-but more important, of
amazingly beautiful intellectual and spiritual quality. Al-
ways a lover and a student of Lincoln, he resolved a few years
ago to set down his personal recollections of the man. In
these is the chapter to which I referred above as contributing,
to my mind, the most reliable, intelligent and sympathetic
study that we have ever had of Ann Rutledge and Lincoln.
With these materials adding to and clarifying what has been
collected in other ways, chiefly by William H. Herndon, the
story comes out clearly. The tragedy with which it ends is
a natural tragedy, not one clouded by the introspection of a
neurotic young girl or the abandonment of all control by an
equally neurotic young man.
When Lincoln came to New Salem in the summer of
1831, as a clerk in a store, hidden from the main part of the
town by a bend in the road, a section which with its gander
pulling, cock fighting and drinking was outside the pale of
the more respectable portion of the community, there was at
[213]
least one girl of unusual attractiveness in the little settlement;
she was the daughter of one of the leading citizens, a half
owner in the mill and the owner of the tavern, James Rutledge
by name. The one thing upon which all of those who have
left personal recollections of Ann Rutledge agree is that she
was a healthy, natural girl, of an unusually happy dis-
position, well trained, industrious, ambitious. And this we
would expect, for the Rutledges were of a fine type, with
traditions of orderly living, ambitious for their children. Ann
particularly had responded to their anxiety that all of their
nine children should somehow get an education. When Lin-
coln arrived in New Salem the girl was not only her mother's
aid in the work of the four-room tavern, active at the spinning
wheel and quilting frame, she was studying regularly under
Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster.
Naturally enough, Lincoln would not be long in finding
out that this charming girl had a lover. Across the street
from the Rutledge tavern-so near that one could call across
-was the general store of Samuel Hill and John MeN eill,
both of whom had tried for Ann's favor. The latter had won,
but as she was eager for more schooling, so Lincoln would
early learn, she had determined before she was married to
spend one year at least in the academy at Jacksonville, some
seventy-five miles away.
Now, one of the acquaintances that Lincoln made at the
start in New Salem was the schoolmaster, Mentor Graham,
and to him he went constantly for help in his studies. The
schoolhouse did not stand on the ridge with the little group
of dwellings, but on a hillside to the south, not far from the
road which led out to Springfield. It was natural enough that
the two young people should be drawn together over their
books under Mentor Graham's tuition; that they should walk
back and forth together to consult him. The tradition is that
[214]
ANN RUTLEDGE
when Lincoln was studying grammar, Ann Rutledge worked
with him, and that it was to her he gave the book when he
was through with it. The inscription on the flyleaf, "Ann
Rutledge is now studying grammar," is believed to have been
written by Lincoln's hand. At least the book went down in
the family, and it was treasured for years by a nephew of
Ann's, W. W. Rutledge, who again and again refused offers
of large sums of money for the book, but finally placed it in
the hands of Miss Hamand for the Decatur collection, only
because he knew that there it would ha,ve the care that it
deserved.
One cannot go through the streets of the little town and
see the relation of the houses and shops in which the people
were living and working without realizing how the two young
people-grammar aside-would be thrown constantly into
each other's company. There were all the local merry-mak-
ings-qui! tings, corn-huskings, picnics-and there were long
horseback rides (in the museum at New Salem Ann Rut-
ledge's side saddle holds a place of honor). There were the
nightly gatherings in cold and wet weather around the fire-
place in. the living room of the Rutledge Inn. It was a
pleasant room, I have no doubt. The few possessions that
we have dating back to that time show that there was refine-
ment, interest in good things, in the family. There is a fine
old pewter coffee pot in the New Salem museum, out of which
Mrs. Rutledge poured coffee. There is the family Bible, with
its carefully :filled out lists of births and deaths. In Decatur
there is the copy of the hymn and song books from which
night after night they sang together-The Watt's Psalm
Book, The Missouri Harmony. It was from the latter that
Lincoln himself used to try to sing, it is said, though by all
accounts he had little either of ear or voice. Legacy is a
song in The Missouri Harmony with which he used to tease
[215]
Ann's little sister Nancy, who tells of having run out of the
room blushing whenever he sang it to her-a modest little
girl certainly, for the verses are harmless enough.
Another meeting "place for Ann and Lincoln was in the
home of Mr. Rankin's mother, the daughter of Col. Matthew
Rogers, an early settler in the "Sangamon country," living
some four miles to the east of New Salem. Lincoln had been
first drawn to the Rogers home by the books the Colonel had
brought from the East, books of which he became a borrower.
Not only did the Rogers have books, they had newspapers that
could not be found elsewhere. Then, too, there were in the
family three or four young men near Lincoln's age, who had
had excellent schooling, one or two of whom were carrying on
medical studies. These were attractions enough, but it is
not unfair to say that Lincoln may have found another in the
fact that Ann Rutledge also went regularly to the Rogers
home, where Mr. Rankin's mother, a teacher, was tutoring her
for the Jacksonville Academy.
And so the acquaintance went on, quite naturally and
intimately, based on mutual ambitions and the mutual ac-
tivities necessary to realize those ambitions. There is not a
hint, so far as I find in any of the recollections, that MeN eill
himself resented in any way this intimacy. He did dis-
approve, it is said, of Ann's spending a year in Jacksonville
Academy. He wanted to be married. He was, for the time,
a rich man, though one does not see it in the restoration of
the little store of which he was part owner, across the street
from the Rutledge tavern, but he had a farm outside, and was
a clever trader-evidently a natural money-maker, though all
agree a man of cold and reserved nature.
Lincoln's daring ventures into the mercantile field, de-
scribed in a previous chapter, finally brought him from the
riotous end of the settlement into a store side by side with that
[216]
ANN RUTLEDGE
of McNeill and directly facing the front door of Ann's home.
There used to be a big tree in front of this store, the roots of
which the New Salem restorers told me were recently un-
earthed. Under this tree Lincoln stretched with his books in
idle hours, and when Ann sat at her spinning wheel in the
shadow of the cabin in the afternoon, or sewed or studied
there, he could call across to her, run across and visit, and no
doubt did many a time.
The store petered out in 1833, but Lincoln stayed on. I
have often wondered how much Ann Rutledge had to do with
his holding on in New Salem in those months of uncertain
occupation. Did he realize there might be a chance for him
l t e r ~ He was too keen eyed, too understanding of people,
not to see that MeN eill was moody n ~ restless. He had de-
cided that he must go East, so he told his friends. He was
going to bring back his father and mother and put them on
his farm. Finally he sold his interest in the store and, early
in the spring of 1834, left. Lincoln, now postmaster of New
Salem, must have noticed that weeks and weeks went on and
no letter came back from MeN eill. He must have realized
Ann's anxiety almost as soon as her parents did; but he did
not know that the girl, not hearing from her lover, had con-
fided to them that just before saying good-by, McNeill had
told her a strange story, that his real name was McNamar,
that he had thought it best to change his name, because the
family fortunes had been low in the East and that he had
come West to redeem them. The girl could not but have
doubted the explanation. Her family and friends, when they
learned the truth, doubted it still more, and that, joined with
his long silence-a silence later explained by the fact that he
had been ill-led them to believe that the man was unworthy
of her trust. Certain it is that as time went on and nothing
was heard of McNeill the girl's feelings changed.
[217]
Lincoln ~ s on the ground, and making his way fast. He
was not only deputy surveyor of Sangamon County, but in
1834 he had been elected to the assembly. He had begun to
study law. He was respected and backed by the best people
in the vicinity. The whole community began to realize be-
fore he went to Vandalia for his first term in the assembly
that he was thoroughly in love with Ann; but it was not until
the spring of 1835, when MeN eill, or MeN amar, had now
been gone over a year, that the two young people came to-
gether. There seems no doubt at all that Ann was as happy
as Lincoln in this engagement. They were going to be very
sensible; Ann was to have her year in Jacksonville, Lincoln
was to finish his law studies and be admitted to the bar in
1836; then he would settle in Springfield and they would
be married.
Mr. Rankin says that his mother told him that it was
in the early summer of 1835 that Ann first confided to her that
she had become engaged to Mr. Lincoln. She talked freely
to Mrs. Rankin then of the absence and neglect of MeN amar,
acknowledging that her own judgment and heart at length
approved the advice of both her own family and the few
friends to whom she had confided the perplexities through
which she had for months been passing. "My mother said,"
Mr. Rankin goes on, "that in the conversation with her she
manifested no regret or wavering in the choice she had made.
On the contrary, there was a decided spirit of offended
maidenly dignity manifested in all the references she made
to MeN amar, such, my mother said, as could be expected of a
well-bred Southern girl under circumstances showing such
unaccountable neglect."
The year after Mr. Lincoln's death, in November of 1866,
Mr. Herndon gave a lecture in Springfield, Illinois, which he
called "Abraham Lincoln, Ann Rutledge, New Salem,
[218]
ANN RUTLEDGE
Pioneering, and the Poem"-the poem was "Why Should the
Spirit of Mortal Be Proud." The story Mr. Herndon told
in this lecture of Ann Rutledge's attitude of mind after her
engagement to Mr. Lincoln is a direct contradiction to that
of Mrs. Rankin.
"Her word of promise was out to two men at the same time, both
of whom she loved, dearly loved; the consciousness of this and the
conflict of duties, love's promises and womanly engagements made
her think, grow sad, become restless and nervous. She suffered, pined,
ate not and slept not. Time and struggle, as supposed and believed
by many, caused her to have a raging fever, of which she died on the
twenty-fifth of August, A. D. 1835"
So far as the actual personal recollections quoted by Mr.
Herndon in this lecture go, they give only the flimsiest basis
for this interpretation; and yet biographers generally, my-
self included, have accepted more or less at face value this
morbid explanation. It is Mr. Rankin who has cleared the
matter up, giving a natural reason for the girl's death.
It seems that the spring and summer of 1835 were hot
and wet through all of the Sangamon country, and that after
several months of this weather, there was an outbreak of
what was called "bilious fever." There was hardly a house-
hold for miles around New Salem in which there was not
some one ill. At the Rutledges there were several laid low,
Ann being among the last. During this outbreak, as is the
custom always in pioneer communities, those who had been
spared became nurses. Lincoln was very active among his
friends who were suffering, and, naturally, particularly at-
tentive to the Rutledges. When Ann fell ill, he was already
seriously worn out. Indeed, Mr. Rankin believes, from his
mother's statement, that, for nearly a month before the girl's
death he had himself been suffering from chills and fever,
only keeping himself going by heroic doses of the favorite
[219]
remedies of the time. As long as there was a hope of saving
Ann, he persisted in fighting his own illness, but when she
finally died, he went completely to pieces.
The girl's death came to him as a supreme tragedy-the
failure of the most beautiful hopes that he had ever enter-
tained. It is little wonder that, ill as he was in body, stricken
as he was in mind and heart, he should have gone through a
period of terrible despair. Fortunately for him there were
understanding friends at hand to give him both the sympathy
and the care he needed. One gets a. high idea of the quality
of neighborly kindness current in New Salem in 1835 from
the way everybody rallied to Lincoln's help at this moment
of distress. Among the strongest and wisest of the town's
citizens was good Dr. John Allen-a physician of hearts and
souls as well as bodies, all agree in calling him. Dr. Allen had
cared for Ann Rutledge to the last, and now that she was
gone he took charge of Lincoln, bringing him to the home
of his old friends, the Bowling Greenes. Here Lincoln had
long been like one of the family. Both Squire Greene and
Aunt Nancy were of that kind we call the "salt of the earth,"
and they nursed Lincoln as if he had been a son.
It was not long before he had thrown off his fever and
was at work-surveying, reading his law books, preparing
for the extra session of the assembly called for December.
That he should have had during his illness and for weeks
after he was about hours of uncontrollable grief seems to me
to be expected. That he should have gone again and again
to Ann's grave and wept over it is what any man so stricken
would have done. To cry out that he could not bear the
thought of rain and snow upon her grave was what those who
have loved and lost through all time have done. It was the
bitter grief of a man who had loved much and lost all.
But this was not insanity, as Mr. Herndon insinuates. It
[220]
ANN RUTLEDGE
was not even the "partial dethronement" he declares. I have
gone over carefully the various interviews and letters from
which Herndon quotes in his lecture and later in his "Life,"
and cannot find in them any substantial basis for the inco-
herent utterances which he puts into Lincoln's mouth, to give,
as he says, "a fair idea" of his "mental state and condition"
after Ann Rutledge's death:
"Who am I and what, 'mid nature's profoundest uncertainties,
that come and go like chance, whither, no one knows. There, the
cocks crow. Did I not read-but, stay, did I not read law beneath
the shade of this tree, grinding 'round the I love her. Oh!
immensities above me, below me, and around me.
"The dogs, the very dogs bark at me. These limbs and legs, feet
and hands, are mine; yet 'tis strange ! and ah ! thou mysterious state
of things. ls't fate, chance, Providence, God-that so unwinds the
worlds and all their Grief! What's I'm tired and
weary. The clothes I've got on and wear, I know are mine, and
yet they seem not to be. . . .
"What's that in the mill pond, going splash, 'Twas
a fish, I guess. Let's go and feed it, and make it joy, and be happy.
I love her, and shall marry her on tomorrow's eve. So soul be con-
tent and endless joy shall come. Heart of mine be still, for remember
sweet tomorrow eve. Oh ! thou calmest, most boisterous, profoundest
uncertainties of things, hold off, or take another path not coming
here. What! did I Think; what did I It cannot be.
No, it cannot be. She's dead and gone-gone forever. Fare thee
well, sweet girl ! We'll meet again."
Mr. Herndon protests-over-protests-in setting out to
write his story of Ann Rutledge and Abraham Lincoln that
"truth in history" is his "sole and only motive," but this
hysterical soliloquy in no way serves the truth-it obscures
and distorts it.
But if we have no authority for saying that Lincoln "went
insane" after Ann Rutledge's death, we have every reason
to believe that he had received a blow which changed his out-
look on life. Many and various interpretations have been
[221]
given of the effect the death of the girl had on him. One
of his legal associates in Illinois once declared that after he
recovered enough to go about his business, he "leaped wildly"
into public life. This, of course, is pure fiction; Lincoln
was already in public life, serving his first term in the as-
sembiy when Ann Rutledge died. If he ever "leaped wildly"
into politics, he did it in 1832 when, on as little backing as
ever a young man had, he offered himself as a candidate.
Another has told in great detail how in his last interviews
with Ann Rutledge she obtained a promise from him to be-
come a Christian, in her sense. There seems to be no basis
at all for this statement. Others have seen in this the dawn-
ing of his devotion to freedom, to the nation.
Edgar Lee Masters has made the noblest contribution
to these speculations in the sonnet which in recent years has
been engraved on a bronze tablet and set into the great
boulder which marks the grave of Ann in the cemetery of
Petersburg:
Out of me unworthy and unknown
The vibrations of deathless music;
"With malice toward none, with charity for all."
Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,
And the beneficent face of a nation .
Shining with justice and truth.
I am Ann Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union,
But through separation.
Bloom forever, 0 Republic,
From the dust of my bosom!
The death of Ann Rutledge opened wide the vein of
melancholy in Abraham Lincoln's nature. His mind must
have gone back again and again to the summer of 1818, when
Pigeon Creek Valley of Indiana had been swept by a scourge
[222]
OUT Of t.fE UNWGIUfff AftU UNKNOWN
1HE VIBilATIONS flfDE4THU:SS MUSIC!
''WITH NAuer WlTH CHARITY fffUU:
OUT Of Mf: fDRGIY1SS Of MlliDNsTUWAlro lfff.J.JUS.
AND THE BENEf'fCfiJf fACE Of A IATIOI
SHfNlNG WITH tltJSTICE AND TRUTi{
f AM ANN RUTLEDGE WHO SlP 8EIATH THrSE WEEDS.
BtlDYEO Of" ABRAHi\M UACOU.
WEDDED TO lfJM, NOT TliROUGH JJNIDN.
BUT THROUGH SEPARATION
. ; SLnOMF.DBfR, 0 RtPUBlJG.
" .FROM Tlf llUST Of NY BOSOM!.
AUliUST 2STJU8H.
'
.......
)
GRAVE OF ANN UI'LEDGE IN ' R . . o 'KLAND CEMETERY PETERSBURG, MENARD Co., ILLINOis
ANN RUTLEDGE
of disease not uniike that from which the Sangamon country
had just suffered. Then it was his mother who had been taken
from him-now it was his love.
Was he always to lose those he loved best !
Mr. Herndon believes that it was in this period of deso-
lation that Lincoln first came upon those verses on the tran-
S. T. LOGAN & E. D. BAKE.R,
ATTORNEYS AND CouNSELLoRS AT L.Aw.
W
ILL pra-ctice, in conjunction, in tlae Cir-
Courts of this Judicial District, n.ndi n the Circuit
Courts of the Counties of 'Pike, Schuyler n.nd
Springfield,march, 1887. 81-!._
J. T. STUAk'l' AND A. LINCOLN,
A
TTORNEYS and Counsellors at Law, will practict',
conjointly, m the Courts of this Judicial C1rcuit.-
1
Office. No.4 Hoffman's Rew,:uJl statrs.
Spnngfield, aprill2, 1837. 4 f
T
HE partnership heretofore existing between
derstgned, has been by mutual consent. ..... I
The business will be found m the hands of John T. Stuart.
JOHN T. STUART,
April12, 1837. 84 HENRY .E. DUMMER. . .
ABRAHAM LINCOLN S FIRST PROFESSIONAL CARD FROM THE SANGAMO
JOURNAL OF SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, FOR APRIL 12, 1837.
sientness of life which men heard him quote at intervals as
long as he lived:
"Oh ! why should the spirit of mortal be
Like a swift-fleeing meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave."
Again and again in later life he repeated to friends the
entire fourteen melancholy stanzas. Death was everywhere!
It seems probable that it was in this period, too, that
Volney's Ruins took a deep hold on his imagination. I can-
not but believe that Volney's picture of the passing away of
[223]
civilizations, one people building on the tombs of another,
one city growing on the ruins of another, became vastly more
vivid in the light of the sweeping out of love and romance
from his life.
But whatever he suffered, whatever light went out, he
did not lose his grip on realities. On the contrary, he seems
to have taken hold harder than ever, for the next four or five
years' work fixed Lincoln permanently as a factor in the life of
Illinois.
[224]
XVIII
1837-LINCOLN's FIRST BIG YEAR
T
HE first big year in Abraham Lincoln's life was 1837.
It was then that he first proved his skill as a political
leader, was admitted to the bar, began to make speeches that
were preserved, and, most important of all, demonstrated
that he had themoral courage to side openly with what he be-
lieved to be the right of an issue on which the whole country
was divided.
Active as he was, he was by no means free from melan-
choly. The shadow of Ann Rutledge's death still hung over
him. More than one of his friends in the assembly in the
sessions that followed her death in the summer of 1835 have
recalled how quiet he was, how many evenings he left the
group in the tavern to spend with some thoughtful friend.
The most interesting of the reminiscences of these winters in
Vandalia has come to us only recently in a series of letters
and fugitive memoranda from the Rev. James Lemen, a
minister well known in Illinois up to his death in 1870 at the
age of eighty-three.
Mr. Lemen was a son of that s t ~ w r t anti-slavery leader,
the Rev. James Lemen, Sr., who came to Illinois in 1786 as
a confidential agent of Thomas Jefferson, charged with build-
ing up anti-slavery sentiment in the northwestern territory.
During all the years after the ordinance of 1787 made this
territory free, James Lemen fought the strong factions in
Illinois and Indiana which repeatedly petitioned Congress to
repeal the anti-slavery articles of the ordinance. In 18og, at
[225]
Jefferson's request, he founded an anti-slavery branch of the
Baptist Church and later the Illinois Anti-Slavery League-
powerful influences in finally saving the state to freedom
against an opposition whose strength it is very hard for us to
realize to-day.
James Lemen, Sr., had six sons, all of whom, like their
father, became Baptist preachers. It was one of these, his
namesake, that Lincoln knew in Vandalia. Mr. Lemen wrote
his recollections of this acquaintance years ago for his family,
but, so far as I know, no part of it was published before 191).
In these notes he says :
"My period of public service in early and later Illinois, and my
travels as a gospel minister, which covered a period of more than fifty
years, gave me a more or less intimate acquaintance with nearly
every public man in the state within that period, and none of them
impressed me more favorably than Abraham Lincoln, from the first
time I met him in Vandalia, in 1837, when he was a member of the
Legislature. Generally, with strangers, Mr. Lincoln was secretive and
shy, but, from some cause, we formed very strong attachments at our
very first meeting, which steadily increased during his lifetime. My
business at Vandalia that winter kept me there several weeks, and,
both boa:rding at the same place, Mr. Lincoln and I were thrown
together a great deal. Generally, for three nights every week, he was
at my rooms until midnight, and certainly no one was more welcome.
The members of the Legislature said they could not see why he made
a companion of me as I was a preacher, and he cared but little for
religion; but they were in error, as his conversations were chiefly on
the Scriptures and related subjects, and I believe at every meeting I
held on Sundays, in town or adjacent settlements while there, Mr.
Lincoln was present.
"At later periods I was frequently at Springfield on business or
duty, and there Lincoln spent three or four evenings, generally at my
rooms, every week, and he certainly could not have enjoyed our meetings
any more than I did. While there I generally preached every Sunday
in town or country, and Lincoln was nearly always present, although,
ordinarily, he was not a regular church attendant. There was a con-
stitutional trait, or characteristic about Mr. Lincoln that colored nearly
all of his life, and that was a settled form of melancholy, some
[226]
1837-LINCOLN'S FIRST BIG YEAR
times very marked, and sometimes very mild, but always sufficient to
tinge his countenance with a shade of sadness unless a smile should
dispel it, which frequently happened, as he enjoyed humor and often
indulged in it. On matters spiritual, like the philosophical old apostle,
Thomas, he was sometimes inclined to doubt, though to no greater
extent than thousands of church-member Christians. But frequently
he seemed to crave a stronger belief in the Bible truths, and on one
occasion of that kind at Springfield he spent a whole night with me
conversing on Scriptural matters, and at times we engaged in prayer,
and finally he declared our meetings had restored his feelings to a
better state of confidence, and that his doubts were subdued. At that
stage he made a most beautiful prayer which so impressed me that
after its conclusion I asked him if he could repeat it, which he did,
and I wrote it down and preserved a copy of it. This was in 1856,
and was our last meeting."
In reading these reminiscences, one must remember that
they were written long after the event by an aged and fer-
vently pious man who probably exaggerated his intimacy with
Lincoln. I see little reason to doubt their genuineness. In
a letter claimed to be from Mr. Lincoln to Mr. Lemen,
first published in 1915, Mr. Lincoln says: T h ~ memory of
our many 'evening sittings' here and elsewhere, as we called
them, suggests many a pleasant hour, both pleasant and help-
ful."
This letter, if authentic, corroborates Mr. Lemen's story
in the main, but unfortunately it is only a copy. No original
is known, and several serious historical students have chal-
lenged its genuineness as that of the reminiscences.
However deep in melancholy Lincoln may often have sunk
in 18.37, it did not interfere with either his political or his
professional activities. And this is true of all those periods
of gloom through which he went at different times and which
have been interpreted by certain of his biographers as periods
of practical insanity. A man who goes on with his work
regularly and intelligently through a time of moral and men-
[227]
tal abasement and despair is not a crazy man. And Lincoln
always did this. At the time of Ann Rutledge's death, as we
have already seen, it w2ls only when he was absolutely pros-
trated by "chills and fever" that he gave up. As soon as that
illness had abated he went about his business. It was so at
this time. Quiet and brooding as he was, he was still able
to conduct to a successful issue the most spirited bit of political
work that the assembly of Illinois had seen in its twenty-
seven years of life. This was the campaign by which the
capital was taken away from Vandalia and transferred to the
town to which Lincoln was to move-SRringfield, the county
seat of Sangamon County.
As one goes about Vandalia to-day and reviews its early
history in company with the fine group of leaders there who
are so eager to preserve everything of its early history, one
cannot but sympathize with their loss of the capital, inevitable
as it was. As a matter of fact, it was recognized in 1820
when Vandalia was chosen as the capital that it might soon
prove to be too far south for the convenience of the state.
Accordingly the legislature passed an act, saying that at the
end of twenty years it might be changed, if it was so desired.
In anticipation of the expiration of this period a vote was
taken in 1833. There were six contestants at that time, the
geographical center of the state, Jacksonville, Springfield,
Alton, Vandalia and Peoria. Alton won.
They tell you in Vandalia to-day how stirred the town was
when it realized its loss. "We will hold them," a few of
the citizens said. "We will build a capitol ourselves, so fine
they won't leave." And in the summer of 1837 two or three
citizens, largely out of their own pockets, although aided by
materials which could be filched from the stores the United
States Government had collected in the vicinity for building
bridges over the national highway, put up what was, at that
[228]
time, the finest public building in Illinois, the building which
is really t ~ pride of Vandalia to-day, although, unhappily,
it has been "improved" by later well-intentioned but mistaken
groups of citizens.
In this building, now the County Court House, they show
you the assembly room in which Lincoln sat, and where there
went on the lively fight that he, as the head of the Sangamon
County delegation, conducted in the effort to secure the capital
for Springfield. Here he did his persuading, haranguing,
"log rolling." Here is the window, they tell you, from which
he once jumped to break up a quorum.
According to Mr. Herndon, it was four years later, and in
the capitol at Springfield, that Mr. Lincoln executed this
manreuver, though, I do not know why he should not have
jumped from windows in two different capitols! If it would
win a point, we may be sure he did! So let Vandalia stick
to her tradition !
At all events, he won out as leader in this fight for re-
moving the capital to Springfield. Vandalia's fine new capitol
building proved to be a mausoleum for her hopes. To-day
s ~ contents herself with reminiscences, and although there is
a long list of men of fine caliber and achievement connected
with her early history, her chief pride is in the fact that here
Abraham Lincoln spent five winters of his life.
At the close of this session in which Lincoln had dis.:.
tinguished himself as a political leader he moved to Spring-
field. It was less a wrench for him to leave New Salem after
six years there because New Salem was moving out herself-
moving root and branch to Petersburg, a mile or two down the
Sangamon-a town which in 1836 Lincoln had surveyed and
to which he had, in the course of his "log rolling" for the
capital, secured the extension of the road from Springfield.
Petersburg's absorption of New Salem was the victory of the
[229]
prairie over the bluff. The settlers had learned that the
prairie could be made livable, that here was the wealth; they
had learned, too, the difficulty of keeping up roads in towns
situated as New Salem was-a difficulty obvious to visitors
to-day.
There has always been a tendency to emphasize Lincoln's
forlornness in making this move, but, as a matter of fact, he
was stepping into a position superior to that which most
young lawyers of twenty-eight have when they start in a new
place, for Springfield, if a new home, was by no means a
strange town to him. For three years now he had held a
position in its land office. For three years he had been one of
the representatives of the county at the state assembly. It is
safe to venture that there were not many men in Springfield
that he did not know. Moreover, most of these men were
friendly to him, friendly because they had confidence in his
integrity and in his ability. He came, too, fresh from the
laurels that he had won at Vandalia. Springfield was grate-
ful to him and to all the delegation, known in Illinois history
as the "Long Nine," because no one of them was less than
six feet in height; and all that summer barbecues and cele-
brations were given through the county to the delegation "as
demonstrations of approbation for their course in the Legisla-
ture." I have before me a communication from Athens de-
scribing one of these affairs, with a list of twenty-six different
toasts, one of them by "A. Lincoln" and at least three of them
in his honor.
Lincoln was lucky in having a friend in Springfield with
whom he could live, a friend who for several years now was
to be the confidant of his always troubled heart, Joshua F.
Speed. He was fortunate, too, in having a position in a law
firm at once offered him. Major John T. Stuart, whom Lin-
coln himself credits with having encouraged him to study law,
[230]
now took him in, and their card appears first in the Sangamon
Journal for April12, 1837.
That he was a real partner we have evidence from their
fee book, facsimiles of extracts from which have been published
at various times. In the entries for April of the year Lincoln
went up to Springfield there is no fee higher than five dollars,
though a little later we have one of fifty; it seems, however, to
have been exceptional; but if fees were low, so were expenses.
Mr. Charles W. Moores of Indianapolis, who under the title
of "The Career of a Country Lawyer" has made one of the
best studies of Lincoln's legal life which we have, unearthed
a few years ago a number of interesting entries showing both
the modesty of the fees and the modesty of the cost of living ..
While unquestionably the connection with Stuart was a
fine thing for Lincoln, he being a man of good breeding and
education as well as of high standing in the community, Lin
coin was a promising partner. Practically every one in Sanga-
mon County was his friend and his reputation for honesty
was such as to attract business.
The most significant thing in this big year, however, is by
all odds the position Lincoln then took on the slavery ques
tion. To understand what he did we must recall the agitation
at this particular moment, North and South. Anti-slavery
sentiment was becoming more and more formidable through
increased organization, and the multiplication of organs.
The South was mightily stirred, and with reason. In the
South, as well as in the North, anti-slavery sentiment was
making its way; that is, more and more people were doing as
Edward Cole, Governor of Illinois from 1823 to 1826, had
done in 1819, leaving slave territory and freeing their slaves.
The seepage from runaway slaves was increasing, and there
was a disposition stirring in the North to protect the run
aways. The South was determined that the agitation should
[231]
be stopped, and in this determination it had the backing of
the conservative North. State after state passed resolutions
at this time similar to those that the Illinois assembly passed
in this year of 183 7.
"Resolved, That we highly disapprove of the formation of abolition
societies, and of the doctrine promulgated by them.
"That the right of property in slaves is sacred to the slave-
holding States by the Federal Constitution, and that they cannot be
deprived of that right without their consent.
"That the General Government cannot abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia against the consent of the citizens of said
District, without a manifest breach of good faith.
"That the Governor be requested to transmit to the States of
Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, New York and Connecticut a copy
of the foregoing report and resolutions."
Lincoln refused to vote for these resolutions. He agreed
that Congress had no power to interfere with the institution
of slavery in the different states. He differed with the as-
sembly, however, as to the power to abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia, thought that it did have that, thought it
should only be exercised if the people of the District re-
quested it. His real objection to the resolution$ was founded
on his belief that no public expression on slavery should go
out without a declaration that the thing was wrong. The pro-
test on this point which he wrote then, and which he could
find only one other member of the assembly to join him in
signing, read :
"They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both
injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition
doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils."
Nine months after Lincoln turned in this protest there
happened seventy-five miles or so from Springfield, in the
town of Alton on the Mississippi River, a town which Lincoln
undoubtedly knew well enough, a tragedy which tremendously
[232]
stirred him. Alton was a lively town and in the main sym
pathized frankly with slavery-sympathized so much that
when early in this year the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, an active
abolitionist editor, who had recently been driven out of St.
Louis, set up his press there the citizens promptly threw it
into the river. One after another three presses which Lovejoy
brought on were destroyed, and then finally, in November,
a mob, learning that he was starting a fourth press, raided
the building, and before the riot was ended -had killed
Lovejoy.
In the letter to the Rev. James Lemen, to which I re
ferred above, he says: "Lovejoy's tragic death for freedom
in every sense marked his sad ~ n i n g as the most important
single event that ever happened in the new world."
This extraordinary statement, made by a man so careful
in his use of words as Lincoln almost invariably was, if
genuine, shows the depth of the efifect the tragedy had had
upon him. He goes on in this letter to draw a comparison
between Lemen's and Lovejoy's work exceedingly interesting
in itself and also because of the parallel he draws from the
Scriptures:
"Both your father and Lovejoy were pioneer leaders in the cause
for freedom, and it has always been difficult for me to see why your
father, who was a resolute, uncompromising, and aggressive leader,
who boldly proclaimed his purpose to make both the territory and the
state free, never aroused nor encountered any of that mob violence
which both in St. Louis and Alton confronted or pursued Lovejoy,
and which finally doomed him to a felon's death and a martyr's crown.
Perhaps the two cases are a little parallel with those of John and Peter.
John was bold and fearless at the scene of the Crucifixion, standing
near the cross receiving the Savior's request to care for his mother,
but was not annoyed; while Peter, whose disposition to shrink from
public view, seemed to catch the attention of members of the mob on
every hand, until finally, to throw public attention off, he denied his
master with an oath; though later the grand old apostle redeemed
[233]
himself grandly, and, like Lovejoy, died a martyr to his faith. Of
course, there was no similarity between Petees treachery at the Temple
and Lovejoy's splendid courage when the pitiless mob were closing
around him. But in the cases of the two apostles at the scene men-
tioned, John was more prominent or loyal in his presence and atten-
tion to the Great Master than Peter was, but the latter seemed to
catch the attention of the mob; and whereas Lovejoy, one of the most
inoffensive of men, for merely printing a small paper, devoted to the
freedom of the body and mind of man, was pursued to his death; his
older comrade in the cause of freedom, Rev. James Lemen, Sr., who
boldly and aggressively proclaimed his purpose to make both the terri-
tory and the state free, was never molested a moment by the minions
of violence. The madness and pitiless determination with which the
mob steadily pursued Lovejoy to his doom, marks it as one of the
most unreasoning and unreasonable in all time, except that which
doomed the Savior to the cross."
Some three months after Lovejoy's death Lincoln de-
livered his first formal lecture, so far as I know. This was
for the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, a club which
he had helped organize soon after he moved into the town.
The lecture was published at the request of the club by the
Sangamon Journal. It has the pretentious title of "The Per-
petuation of Our Political Institutions." It is really an argu-
ment against violence as a political method. The Mississippi
country had been rioting for a year or two. At Vicksburg
only a short time before a group of professional gamblers
had been hanged by a mob. This had been the first of a series
of terrible deeds. As Lincoln reviews them, "negroes sus-
pected of conspiring to raise an insurrection were caught up
and hanged in all parts of the state; then white men supposed
to be leagued with the negroes; and finally, strangers from
neighboring states, going thither on business, were in
many instances subjected to the same fate. Thus went
on this proce::;s of hanging, from gamblers to negroes,
from negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers,
[234]
till dead men,. were seen literally dangling from the
boughs of trees upon every roadside .... "
Soon after this a negro had been burned in St. Louis.
"This story is very short," Lincoln said, "and is perhaps the
most highly tragic of anything of its length that has ever
been witnessed in real life."
Then had come the affair at Alton. Lincoln's rehearsal
of these crimes, of the danger they were to freedom, sounds
very modern. Indeed, his argument might stand to-day if
its illustrations were brought up to date. He declares that if
this "mobocratic spirit" went on unchecked, it must inevitably
end, in a government constituted like ours, in breaking down
what, he declared, was its strongest bulwark, and that was
the attachment of the people.
"I know the American people are much attached to their govern-
ment," he said. "I know they would suffer much for its sake; I know
they would endure evils long and patiently before they would ever
think of exchanging it for another-yet, notwithstanding all this, if
the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be
secure in their persons and property are held by no better tenure than
the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the govern-
ment is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must
come."
Here we have him, then at the beginning of his career,
the first year in which he really had his feet on the ground
as a politician and a lawyer, putting himself down boldly on
the most difficult question the country has ever had to face.
He went out of his way, both in the legislature and in a
public lecture, to make clear his position, at a time when a
protest, even of that character, might be almost fatal to his
ambitions. It was to be ten years before events were to force
him again to state his convictions; in the meantime life was
to bring him many new experiences, the most important of
these unquestionably being his marriage.
[235]
XIX
MARRIAGE OF LINCOLN
T
HE biographer who undertakes to correct what he
believes to be a mistaken tradition in his subject's life
must make up his mind that whatever his proofs, he will never
be more than half Twenty-five years ago I
gathered and published what seemed to me to be convincing
evidence of the falsehood of the widely accepted story that
Mr. Lincoln failed to appear at his own wedding, set for
January 1, 1841, in Springfield-a wedding for which elab-
orate preparations had been made. Whatever satisfaction I
might have taken in shattering a story which I believed was
the work of a morbid imagination building on flimsy, indirect
evidence, was largely wiped out on the Lincoln pilgrimage
here reported.
It was in Springfield itself where I had found the most
substantial evidence of the untruth of the legend that I met
its stoutest defenders. I should say that Springfield to-day
is pretty evenly divided between those who believe that
Mr. Lincoln ran away from the first wedding planned between
him and Mary Todd, who later became his wife, and those
who believe that he did not. It is one of several controversial
points in his private life which readers will probably continue
to settle according to temperament and mental habits. It is
a fact that to-day there exists what you may call two "Lincoln
wedding schools," just as there exists two schools of Hanks
ancestry, two on the legitimacy of his birth, two on his condi-
tion of mind after Ann Rutledge's death. Frequently the
[236]
MARRIAGE OF LINCOLN
followers of each spend more time in defending w;hat they
would like to think than in disinterested examination of
evidence.
It was by accident that a doubt was first raised in my
mind as to the truthfulness of the story of Mr. Lincoln's
absenting himself from his wedding, published by Ward
Lamon in 1872, from notes furnished him by William H.
Herndon and later elaborated and published by Mr. Herndon
in his life of Lincoln. I had been given a letter of introduc-
tion to Mrs. B. F. Edwards, the sister-in-law of Ninian
Edwards, in whose family Mary Todd lived. Mrs. Edwards
at this time was a woman of perhaps seventy, and of unusual
distinction of manner and of speech. I had gone to her to ask
what she remembered of Mr. Lincoln's place in the social life
of Springfield in the late thirties and early forties.
Early in our conversation I mentioned the resentment they
must have all felt over Mr. Lincoln's failure to appear at the
wedding that had been arranged for January 1, 1841, between
him and Miss Todd. I can still feel something of the chill
which her look gave me when she said with indignation,
"What do you mean'?" Of course, I fell back upon Mr:
Lamon and Mr. Herndon, quoting them nearly verbatim.
Mrs. Edwards denied in every detail the truthfulness of the
tale. Later she put.her denial into a letter, which lies before
me. "All that he says," she writes, "is a fabrication. He has
drawn largely upon his imagination in describing something
which never took place."
Such a lead as this was, of course, not to be neglected, and
I immediately looked up several of the still living friends
of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln in a position to know about the
matter. Important among them was one of the most delight-
ful of the Springfield group to which t ~ Lincolns belonged,
a cousin of Mrs. Lincoln's, to whom both she and the President
[237]
were devoted, and who later spent much time with them in
Washington at the White House. "Cousin Lizzie Grimsley,"
as she was familiarly known, at this time, 1895, the wife of
Dr. Brown of Springfield.
I put the question in writing to Mrs. Brown: "Did Mr.
Lincoln fail to appear 'when the invitations were out, the
guests invited and the supper ready for the wedding''?" This
is Mr. Herndon's account.
"As to your question, I will say emphatically 'No,' " she replied.
"There may have been a little shadow of foundation for Mr. Hern-
don's lively imagination to play upon, in that the year previous to the
marriage, and when Mr. Lincoln and my Cousin Mary expected soon
to be married, Mr. Lincoln was taken with one of those fearful, over-
whelming periods of depression, which induced his friends to persuade
him to leave Springfield. This he did for a time, but I am satisfied
he was loyal and true to Mary, even though at times he may have
doubted whether he was responding as fully as a manly, generous na-
ture should to such affection as he knew my cousin was ready to bestow
on him. And this because it did not have the overmastering depth of
an early love. This everybody here knows, therefore I do not feel
as if I were betraying dear friends."
Mrs. John Stuart, the wife of Major Stuart, who had
taken Mr. Lincoln as his law partner when he moved into
Springfield in 1837, was still living in 18g5, and at Mrs.
Brown's suggestion I saw her. At my request she set down
her recollections:
"Mrs. Lincoln told me herself all the circumstances of her en-
gagement to Mr. Lincoln, of his illness, and the breaking off of the
engagement, of the renewal, and her marriage.
"So I say I do not believe one word of this dishonorable story
about Mr. Lincoln. It is a sad thing for a man's character to be
picked to pieces and defamed after his death."
Among others from whom I sought information was Mrs.
Lincoln's sister, Mrs. Dr. Wallace, whose indignation at the
story, with which she was familiar, almost choked her replies.
[238]
MARRIAGE OF LINCOLN
One remark she dropped I have always remembered as an
illustration of how convincing as evidence a thing entirely
trivial in itself may be. "Why," said Mrs. Wallace, "Mary
Lincoln never had a silk dress in her life until she went to
Washington!" This in answer to Mr. Herndon's description
of the ''bride bedecked in veil and silken gown, nervously toy-
ing with the flowers in her hair!"
One feature of my findings, particularly convincing to me,
was that nobody had ever heard of this wedding before Lamon
and Herndon published their books. It is impossible for me
to believe that in a town of 2,500 people-Springfield's popu-
lation in 1841-there could have been a wedding arranged
between two of the members of its "fashionable set" and
rudely broken by the non-appearance of the groom without
the story becoming town property and being passed down for
years as a part of its local history. But, as I say, nobody
seems to have remembered hearing of the wedding.
After I had published the results of my investigation in
1896, I received from Mr. John Davis, of Junction City,
Kansas, a letter in which he said:
"I spent the years 1846-7 in Springfield; saw Mr. Lincoln, the
Edwards and others almost daily; and had frequent long talks with
Mr. Herndon, but never heard a word of the horrible story which
he afterwards published in his book. I do not believe it."
Wedding aside, however, the fact remains that Mr.
Lincoln did not have the resolution to go through without
a break with what undoubtedly had proved a tempestuous
engagement. Given Miss Todd's temperament and his experi-
ence, it is understandable if regrettable. Four years before
his one real romance had been ended by the death of the girl
he loved. Heavy as was the blow he had pulled himself
together. The next year he was even thinking of marriage
with a young woman visiting in New Salem, the sister of
[239]
one of his friends there. We have the letters he wrote at
the time to this young woman, and they are almost comic
in their disinterestedness and simple-mindedness. It seems
that he had jokingly told a friend that he would marry her
sister if she would bring her to New Salem. When the young
lady appeared he jumped to the conclusion that there was a
promise involved. He seems faithfully to have visited her,
to have become her escort at New Salem festivities, and when
in the winter of 1836-7 he went back to Vandalia, to have
written her occasional amusingly conscientious and impersonal
letters-letters headed "Friend Mary" and signed "Your
Friend"!
After he moved to Springfield in the spring of 1837, he
still had her on his mind. Did she or did she not expect
him to marry her'? He finally got up courage to bring the
matter to issue:
"I want in all cases to do right," he wrote, "and most particularly
so in all cases with women. If you feel yourself in any degree bound
to me I am now willing to release you, provided you wish it, while
on the other hand I am willing and anxious to bind you faster if I
can be convinced that it will in any considerable degree add to your
happiness. This indeed is the whole question with me. If it suits
you best not to answer this, a long life and a merry one attend
you."
The young woman rightfully was unsatisfied with this
kind of love-making and concluded that the affair had gone
far enough.
There is an idea among many Lincoln students, I find,
that when Mr. Lincoln came to Springfield he did not have
what is called social position. That this is a mistake there
is evidence enough. Springfield was a small town, of course,
but it had a group of the finest sort of pioneers. There were
the Edwardses, the Logans, the Stuarts, the Speeds, and from
the start they were Lincoln's friends. A little document, such
[240]
MARRIAGE OF LINCOLN
as that published in this article, a facsimile of an invitation
to a cotillion party given in 1839, '\Wth its list of managers,
shows that he was already counted among social leaders!
And there is no question he was doing his part to keep up
the gaieties.
Only a few years ago ( 191 7) there was published for the
first time in Gilbert Tracy's book of "Uncollected Letters
of Abraham Lincoln," the following amusing letter to his
friend, MN;. C. H. Browning, written by him though signed
by a group:
(Probable date: Oct. 10 or 11, 1839.)
"To the Honorable Mrs. Browning:
"We, the undersigned, respectfully represent to your H onoress,
that we are in great need of your society in the town of Springfield
and therefore humbly pray that your Honoress will repair forthwith
to the seat of Government bringing in your train all ladies in general
who may be at your command and all Mrs. Browning's sisters in
particular (the above was written by A. L.), and as faithful and
dutiful petitioners we promise that if you grant this our request, we
will render unto your Honoress due attention and faithful obedience
to your orders in general and to Miss Brownings in particular.
"In tender consideration whereof we pray your Honoress to grant
your humble petitioners their above request and such other and further
relief in the premises as to your Honoress may seem right and proper;
and your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray, etc.
f "A. Lincoln
(S" d) I 0. B. Webb
lgne l J. J. Hardin
John Dawson"
Obviously it was the intention of the signers to bring
together for the first session of the legislature in Springfield
as many ladies as possible, and we can suppose that the
cotillion party was the first inaugural ball of the new social
capital of Illinois!
There was much gaiety in the town from that time on.
Young women came to visit_ not only from Illinois towns, but
[241]
N-. " Ill DG.LY9
tl. A. 'N'CLEitNAJit
R At.&.CN.
... H. WASH,
,.. W. "1'01-D,
8. Ao SOUC,&.AU.
s. ?lttrrU.
fL-.. IDWARN.
f'. SPCCIJ,
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H. C. WHIUSIOL
II.
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Ml.lf$U8.
FACSIMILE OF AN INVITATION TO A SPRINGFIELD COTILLION PAR.TY
OF WHICH A. LINCOLN WAS ONE OF THE MANAGERS.
[242]
MARRIAGE OF LINCOLN
from Kentucky itself, from which so large a contingent had
moved into the new state. Mr. Lincoln seems to have done
his share in entertaining these young women, and gossip says
that he was the suitor of at least two of them before he became
interested in Miss Todd. This happened in 1840.
Mary Todd was probably as spirited and accomplished
as well as self-confident a young woman as Springfield had
ever seen. She had come there in 1839 to live with her sister,
Mrs. Elizabeth Todd Edwards, wife of Ninian Edwards, the
son of a former governor of the state and himself a man of
wealth and importance. Mary Todd naturally had many
suitors, one of whom, it is said, was a man whom Mr. Lincoln
had already picked as an antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas.
Even if it be true that Mr. Douglas was the ardent suitor
for Mary Todd's hand that many have believed, he left the
field early, for before the end of her first year in Springfield
she was engaged to ~ 1 r Lincoln.
Things seem never to have gone very well. She was of
ardent temperament, and I have always believed passion-
ately in love with Mr. Lincoln. Mrs. Dr. Brown, the a:ffec:.
tionate and intimate friend of them both, says in the letter
from which I quoted above that in her judgment Mr. Lincoln
always doubted whether he was "responding as f ~ l l y as a
manly, generous nature should to such affection as he knew
my cousin was ready to bestow upon him. And this because
it did not have the overmastering depth of an early love."
There of course was the real difficulty-Mr. Lincoln's
inability to forget, his moody, brooding nature. Then, too,
he was nine years older than Mary Todd, and came of humble
people, though he himself underestimated the sturdiness of
his origin. The Todds were "first families," aristocrats, prid-
ing themselves on a long line of dashing ancestors. I rather
think Mary Todd was the kind who might at times have
[243]
recalled l\1r. Lincoln's attention to what she considered the
superiority of her family over his. It is said that there were
members of her family that did this, though I have a copy
of a letter from her father, written in 1846, in which he
rejoices that all his daughters had married gentlemen. This,
of course, included Mr. Lincoln, whom Mr. Todd by this
time knew very well.
The difference between him and the woman to whom
he had become engaged, his doubt about his ability to make
her happy, his consciousness that she did not arouse in him
the depth of feeling of which he must have known himself
capable, finally drove Mr. Lincoln to the breaking of the
engagement. That done, he promptly fell into the very
slough of self-abasement and humiliation.
There is much loose writing and talking about his having
gone insane at this period, but a man who goes about his work
through a period of depression is a man who has control of
his mind and his actions. Through all this period of so-called
insanity Mr. Lincoln was about his work. His vote is recorded
on the roll call of the legislature on one of the very days
when he was reported to have been wandering aimlessly about
the country. On the very day on which he wrote one letter
of great misery to his friend Stuart he made a speech in the
legislature. Depression'? Yes-ample proof of it. Insanity'?
No-ample proof against it. He was a humiliated and repent
ant man. Moreover, he found that though he might not
care all he thought he ought to care for Miss Todd, he cared
altogether too much for her to want to lose her.
The episode which brought about a reconciliation has
been told many times, but there is one phase of it which I
think has not had its full value, and this was the check it
proved to the mischief that Mr. Lincoln was in danger of
[244]
MARRIAGE OF LINCOLN
doing to himself and his friends by an unbridled use of his
gift of satire.
Back in Indiana, where he easily dominated the youth of
the community, one of the weapons he had used most
effectively on his enemies was merciless lampooning. Long
doggerels ridiculing the weak points of people who had dis-
pleased him, or, as he thought, done him an injury, have been
preserved and portions of them published. After he left
Indiana he seems not to have exercised this gift until 1837.
In that year he fought a case in the newspapers, evidently
enjoying himself hugely by exposing a politician who had
tried to trick a widow out of property. A little later, in
1841, he attacked the Democrats then in power on their
administration of state finances in a letter signed "Aunt
Rebecca," coming from what he called the "Lost Township."
This communication was particularly irritating to the auditor
of the State, James Shields. In writing this letter, Mr.
Lincoln, of course, was only following a practice of the day.
James Russell Lowell was to do something of the same kind
of thing in his "Bigelow Papers," so was D. R. Locke in the
Nasby letters. That is, Mr. Lincoln in his "Aunt 13.ebecca"
letter was a member of a distinguished company.
Trouble came, bowever, when Miss Todd and some of
her friends, who thought they had reason to consider Mr.
Shields over-gallant, sent a doggerel to the paper, ridiculing
his philandering, signing the communication "Aunt Rebecca."
Shields was a hot-tempered Irishman. He demanded frorn
the editor of the paper the name of the author of the verses.
The editor consulted Mr. Lincoln, who said, "Give my name
and protect the ladies." The result was a challenge from
Shields.
The documents in this case were gathered for my Life
of Lincoln twenty-five years ago, when many of the actors
[ ~ ~ ]
were still living, by Mr. J. McCan Davis of Springfield, and
all that seemed essential published. They show that Lincoln
tried to get out of the duel; but when Shields pressed him
so that it meant either give names or go ahead, he accepted.
Being the one challenged, he had the right, of course, to select
weapons, position, time and place.
I do not know anything funnier in Lincoln's life . than
his choice of weapons in this case, it being remembered that
he was six feet four inches high and Shields so short that
he could walk under his arm-"cavalry broadswords of the
largest size." The place selected-and where the con-
testants and their seconds actually gathered-was a sandbar
in the Mississippi River, opposite the town of Alton.
Visit Alton to-day and you will be sure to find some news
paper man with a bent for local history, or perhaps, better
still, some old-timer who will take you out on the bluffs and
show you where the duelists foregathered. They will tell you,
too, how one of the spectators saw Mr. Lincoln just before
the critical hour arrived pick up a broadsword, feel along
the edge with his thumb as a barber feels the edge of his razor,
and then stretching himself to his full height clip a twig
above his head. "There was not another man of us," said
this spectator, "who could reach anywhere near that twig,
and the absurdity of that long-reaching fellow fighting with
cavalry sabers a man who could walk under his arm came
pretty near making me howl with laughter."
Luckily for both Shields and i n c o l n ~ some of their level-
headed friends back home heard of the affair and hastened
to Alton, arriving on the scene just in time to prevent the
actual use of the broadswords. Mr. Shields was made to
understand that it was not Mr. Lincoln who had written the
objectionable verses, the quarrel was patched up, and every-
body went home in good humor.
[246]
MARRIAGE OF LINCOLN
Mr. Lincoln's gallantry in being willing to fight a duel
rather than to betray Miss Todd's name seems to have broken
the ice that separated them. Through the manreuvering of
friends they were soon thrown together, their misunderstand-
ing settled, and a few weeks later, on November 2, 1842,
they were rather hastily married at the Edwards home.
At last Mr. Lincoln's troubled heart was at rest. He had
made his decision, and there was never any doubt that one of
the chief businesses of his life henceforth would be to make
the woman he had taken for his wife happy.
He had to suffer, however, for the manreuver which had
brought them together. Dueling had ceased to be tolerated
by the public. Alton and its citizens particularly resented the
selection of a point near them as a dueling place. . They could
not and would not, they said, have there another "Bloody
Island," as a spot in the Mississippi near St. Louis was called. _
The Alton Telegraph and Democratic Review published a
scathing editorial:
"Our city was the theatre of an unusual scene of excitement during
the last week, arising from a visit of two distingul.shed gentlemen
of the city of Springfield, who, it was understood, had come here with
a view of crossing the river to answer the 'requisitions of the code
of honor' by brutally attempting to assassinate each other in cold
blood
"We consider that these gentlemen have both violated the laws
of the country, and insist that neither their influence, their respect-
ability nor their private worth should save them from being made
amenable to those laws they have violated. Both of them are lawyers
-both have been to the legislature of this State, and aided in the
construction of laws for the protection of society-both exercise no
small influence in the community-all of which, in our estimation,
aggravates instead of mitigates their offense. Why, therefore, they
should be permitted to escape punishment, while a_ friendless, penni-
less and obscure person, for a much less offense, is hurried to the cells
of our county jail, forced through a trial, with scarcely the forms of
[247]
law, and finally immured within the dreary walls of a penitentiary,
we are at a loss to conjecture .
"The friends of Mr. Shields and Mr. Lincoln claim the affair
to have been settled upon terms alike honorable to both, notwithstand-
ing the hundred rumors-many of which border upon the ridiculous-
that are in circulation. We are rejoiced that both were permitted to
return to the bosom of their friends, and trust that they will now
consider, if they did not do it before, that rushing unprepared upon
the untried scenes of Eternity is a step too fearful in its consequences
to be undertaken without preparation.
"We are astonished to hear that large numbers of our citizens
crossed the river to witness a scene of cold-blooded assassination be-
tween two of their fellow-beings. It was no less disgraceful than
the conduct of those who were to have been actors in the drama.
Hereafter we hope the citizens of Springfield will select some other
point to make public their intention of crossing the Mississippi to
take each other's life than Alton ... "
Again and again in the next few years this duel obtruded
itself into political campaigns where Mr. Lincoln was a candi-
date. Mrs. Lincoln may have been proud of it, but sober
people saw nothing in it but a disgraceful performance-
they would not vote for a man who had fought a duel!
He grew to be much ashamed of the whole affair-un-
willing to talk about it. Frank Carpenter says that once when
he was at work in the White House on a portrait of Mr.
Lincoln, the affair was mentioned, and the President, with a
real show of irritation, said: "I don't deny it, but if you
desire my friendship, you will never mention the circumstance
again''-a remark which hardly can be said to sound like
Mr. Lincoln.
The important point, aside from the effect that it had
upon his love affair, is that Mr. Lincoln learned at this time
the danger of lampooning-never again, so far as I know,
did he rush into print to lambast a political or legal enemy.
He must many times have itched to do it, but his control of
his capacity for satire, after the frequent use he had made
[248]
MARRIAGE OF LINCOLN
of it, is remarkable; and I have always believed that it came
from the lesson he learned from the so-called Lincoln-Shields
duel.
He was married, thirty-four years of age, a practicing
lawyer, a member of the state legislature-well started, we
FACSIMILE OF MARRIAGE LICENSE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND MARY TOOD.
should say, but a poor man still. And the question now
seemed to be, Was he going to be able to support a wife-
a wife who had come to him out of a distinguished family,
and who had always been accustomed to a good degree of
what the time called comfort'?
[249]
XX
LINCOLN SETTLES DOWN
T
HE whole-hearted way in which Springfield, Illinois, has
in recent years accepted the leadership of the Lincoln
cult of the world is a genuine satisfaction to those of us who
believe that there is where it belongs, and also who have felt
in the past that the town was lukewarm towards its responsi-
bility. The Springfield of 1923 is taking Lincoln to its heart
and confidence in much the same way that the Springfield of
1837 did. He might be poor, uneducated, not familiar with,
nor impressed by their social veneer; but, almost to a man,
early Springfield believed in and honored Abraham Lincoln.
He realized it. In 1861 when he left for his inauguration,
he paid her an unforgettable tribute: "To this place and to
the kindness of its people I owe everything."
It is not strange that the bitter dissensions of the War as
well as the almost equally bitter periods before and after
should have made Springfield as a whole reluctant to admit
that Lincoln was its first citizen, much less the first American.
They still were divided by political resentment-the slowest
thing in the world to heal.
I recall that twenty-five years ago I met many men not
only in Springfield but many other cities and towns of Illinois
who seemed glad to belittle Mr. Lincoln. He was "ordinary"
-"intellectually dull"-"without literary taste"-"always
stole his stories." I find these trivial comments in my old
note books. One gentleman of particular eminence bitterly
resented Lincoln's remark after his re-nomination in 1864 that
[250]
the convention had probably concluded that it was best "not
to swap horses while crossing the river." It wasn't "original"
with Lincoln-he had heard it all his life!
Then Springfield was still too close to him. How are
you going to accept offhand as the country's first citizen a
man whom all your life you have seen carrying home beef-
steaks for his supper!
There was a long period in which Springfield treated all
Lincolniana with more or less indifference. The Lincoln
monument in the town's beautiful cemetery and the Lincoln
homestead, given in, 1886 to the state by Robert Lincoln,
with rather meager collections were all that was offered
VISitors. That period is closed. To-day not only are the
collections at the monument and the homestead largely in-
creased and admirably cared for, but the Illinois Historical
Society has gathered at the capital what is probably for
students the best Lincoln collection in the world. Recently
the town has put up tablets marking sites formerly difficult
to locate-Joshua Speed's store where Lincoln went to live
in 1837; his different law offices and various other points
of interest. To be sure, the taxi drivers and even some of
Springfield's first citizens do not always know how to take
you to them; but this will pass. The unbroken train of
pilgrims coming to the town to honor Lincoln's memory will
finally educate them.
It is because of these tablets that it is easy now to find
the site of the Globe Tavern where Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln
went to live after their marriage iri November, 1842:
"On this site stood the Globe Tavern, the home of Abraham Lin-
coln and his wife from the time of their marriage on Nov. 4, 1842,
until May 2, 1844. Here their first child was born."
It was an unpretentious enough place, but quite as good
as.the tavern in most of the Illinois towns at this date. And
[251]
it was cheap. Four dollars a week for room and board, so
Mr. Lincoln wrote his friend Speed a few months after the
marriage.
Was he happy here after his tempestuous courtship'? One
has a right to ask, since all the outpourings of his heart have
been published and republished, and subjected to interpreta-
tions of varying degrees of understanding. And when I ask
that I mean, Have we any written word to tell us'? Not
one-the only comment of his on his marriage I have ever
seen was published only a few years ago-a brief word at
the end of a business letter written a few days after the
wedding:
"Nothing new here" (Springfield) "except my marrying which to
me is a matter of profound wonder."
Not surprising that he should wonder. He had been
through two years of self-torment; he had agonized over
Mary Todd's supposed suffering; he had been through all
the throes of a man stirred by passion and yet uncertain
whether in the relation there could be permanent companion-
ship and sympathy. And now his period of suffering had been
ended by a farcical duel destined to torment him-and justly
enough-as long as he lived! Not surprising that he was
amazed finally to find himself with a wife.
Lincoln seems to have settled down at once in the Globe
Tavern as a family man. A "coming event" soon contributed
to his stability. In May he wrote to the Speeds, who had
suggested a visit to Louisville, that they could not go, not
only because of "poverty and the necessity of attending to
business," but a "coming event." The "coming event" was
Mr. Robert Lincoln, who was born at the Globe Tavern on
August 1, 1843.
We have so many revelations of Mr. Lincoln's morbid-
[252]
ness at this period that it is a great pity that there are no
letters telling about Robert Lincoln's birth. A man never
lived to whom the coming of a child would have brought more
gladness than Abraham Lincoln; but we have nothing to tell
us about it. Indeed, so far as I know, there is .not a line in
reference to his children published between this letter and
one written also to Speed in October of 1846. It announced
another boy-born on the 1oth of March.
"Very much such a child as Bob was at his age," he writes, "rather
of a longer order. Bob is short and low and I expect always will be.
He talks very plainly" (he was now only a little over two years old)-
"almost as plainly as anybody. He is quite smart enough. I some-
times fear he is one of the little rare-ripe sort that are smarter at about
five than ever after. He has a great deal of that sort of mischief that
is the offspring of such animal spirits. Since I began this letter a mes-
senger came to tell me that Bob is lost, but by the time I reached the
house his mother had found him and had whipped him, and by now,
very likely, he has run away again."
That the Lincolns found life difficult at the Globe Tavern
with a baby to care for was of course true, and by the end
of the year Mr. Lincoln was looking for a home. In January
he bought the house which, afterwards enlarged, he lived in
until he left Springfield for the Presidency. He must have
been getting on better in his profession than has been generally
believed, to have been able to do this. Fees may have been
small-they were-five dollars, ten, rarely fifty-often traded
out; but he had been able to save enough to justify him in
contracting on January 16, 1844, with the Rev. Charles
Dresser-who had married him and Mary Todd-for a house
and lot. He was to pay $1,200 for the place, plus a piece of
property in what is now the heart of the town. He had part
of the money, we know, from a curious document which went
with the contract with Dresser-a contract by which Mr.
Lincoln, in February, turned over to a probable creditor of
[253]
Dresser's, $7 50, with the stipulation that if he did not get
the house, the money was to be returned to him, with twelve
per cent interest! Twelve years before, when he first was a
candidate for the assembly of Illinois, he had proposed a law
regulating "exorbitant rates of interest"-but possibly in
1844 twelve per cent was not considered exorbitant!
The important point about the purchase is that Lincoln
was getting hold financially-his feet on the ground. It was
not easy, for he had not only his personal struggle, but he had
had a constant pull-and was to have through life-from
his family. His father and stepmother had been now for
about ten years in Coles County, to which they had moved
after the disastrous "winter of the deep snow" near Decatur,
but they had never been able to pay for their land. If Mr.
Lincoln had not come to their rescue the year before his
marriage they probably would have been homeless. He
helped them out of their difficulties by buying their land,
paying them $2oo, and giving them the right to its use as
long as either of them lived. That he was helping other
relatives is pretty certain. The Hankses and Johnstons and
Halls in Coles County, cut off as they were from transporta-
tion, were having a difficult time; it was natural enough that
they should think of Mr. Lincoln, who had risen to member-
ship in the assembly and was now practicing law in the
capital of the state, as a rich man, their natural source of
support, and have made frequent demands on him. That is,
Mr. Lincoln when he married had within the state a group
of relatives, among them his own father and the stepmother
whom he so honored, that he could not entirely neglect, how
ever much Mary Lincoln may at times have resented it.
It was natural that she should. Their income was small;
but that Mrs. Lincoln made it go a long way is certain. She
was a careful housekeeper. Those of her associates living in
[254]
Springfield in the late nineties with whom I talked, all spoke
of her economies. "How is Cousin Mary getting on in the
White House'?" one of them told me of asking Mrs. Grimsley
when she came back in 1862 from a long visit in Washington.
"Oh, Cousin Mary," Mrs. Grimsley said, throwing up
her hands, "is locking up the sugar bowl in Washington as she
used to in Springfield." But it was this locking up of the
sugar bowl that, after all, helped lay the foundation of the
$1 oo,ooo or thereabouts that Mr. Lincoln was to leave his
family some twenty y e ~ s later.
Mr. Lincoln did his part in the running of the house.
He sawed the wood, chopped the kindling, kept his fires going,
brought in the water, cleaned the walks. He naturally and
unquestionably performed a multitude of little tasks to which
his mother had trained him back in Kentucky and Indiana.
He liked to do these famillar things-particularly to chop
wood. He not only did it at home but at his office. Mr.
Charles Moores of Indianapolis, whose interesting study of
Lincoln as a lawyer I have already referred to, found in his
researches the following entries in a record of expenses of
the Stuart & Lincoln office :
"Lincoln paid for wood ............ $ .50
" " saw............ 2.25
A chance for an exercise he loved when the day was long and
cold.
Springfield was a simple town, nevertheless an active
social life went on, particularly in the winter when the
assembly was in session; and the Lincolns were a part of
everything. They went out to supper and invited people in,
Mary Lincoln keeping up her end from the start-that is the
general testimony, and although she might not have been
cordial always to the variegated humanity that Mr. Lincoln
[255]
in his love of all the world would be inclined to pick up and
bring home to supper, she probably put no greater restrictions
upon him than most women would have been obliged to do
in self-defense. The people she did like and received have
left hearty appreciation of her hospitality. What better than
this from Isaac Arnold's "Reminiscences of the Illinois Bar" :
"I must not omit to mention the old-fashioned, generous hospitality
of Springfield-hospitality proverbial to this day throughout the
State. Among others, I recall the dinners and evening parties given
by Mrs. Lincoln. In her modest and simple home, there was always,
on the part of both host and hostess, a cordial and hearty western
welcome, which put every guest perfectly at ease. Mrs. Lincoln's table
was famed for the excellence of many rare Kentucky dishes, and in
season, it was loaded with venison, wild turkeys, prairie chickens,
quail, and other game which was then abundant. Yet it was her
genial manners and ever kind welcome, and Mr. Lincoln's wit and
humor, anecdote and unrivaled conversation, which formed the chief
attraction."
He was working-working hard. Mr. Moores' studies
show this, so does Jesse W eik' s recent book, "The Real
Lincoln," in which he has collected much fresh and interest
ing material on Lincoln's legal work. They show how his
practice steadily increased in volume and range in these years.
When he first was admitted, the circuit included but seven
counties, but by 1845 these had been increased to fifteen, so
that he had the chance, if the ability and will, to cover a
large territory. Mr. Moores was impressed in his researches,
as any student who goes over this ground even superficially
must be, by the quantity of pleadings in Lincoln's hand which
are still to be seen-which the thieves have left! It is true,
as he says of them, that they are "as clear as if written yester-
day. They cover so many sheets in the old Sangamon files,
and in some other counties where the thief has not yet been
that one wonders how Lincoln had time for anything else.
[256]
All are written with laborious care. The apt word is used;
there are singularly few corrections, and the sand then used
as a blotter still clings to the sheets. The spelling is reason-
ably correct-vastly more so, at any rate, than that of George
Washington, in his autograph manuscripts."
There are few particularly interesting cases in his early
practice. Possibly the most characte.ristic is that which Lin-
coln won by producing a murdered man alive and well. It
came off in June of 1841. (The time when Mr. Lincoln is
commonly reported to have been suffering from mental aberra-
tion in Kentucky under the care of his friends, the Speeds!)
In a long letter to Speed, Lincoln tells the tale in graphic
fashion: "We have had here for aweek the highest state of
excitement that our community has ever witnessed," he says.
He can give only an outline because it would "require a quire
of paper to give a full account." I suppose the reason Lincoln
wrote so fully to Speed was because all of the persons in the
case were known to him. These were three brothers, the Trailor
boys, two of whom had accused the third of making away with
a well-known Sangamon County loafer (I should judge he was
a loafer from the side text) named Fisher. The two brothers
were arrested and the country went crazy in an attempt to
find the body, which they were supposed to have secreted. In
the hunt a mill dam was destroyed, and then, says Mr.
Lincoln, "the people swept like a herd of buffalo up and
down the creek, fishing and raking and ducking and diving
for two days, and after all, no dead body found." Lincoln
went over the evidence brought in with gusto, and then came
his defense-a witness proving to the satisfaction of the jury
that Fisher, the man supposed to have been murdered, was ill
at the moment at his (the witness's) house.
The effect of this testimony on the public which had been
so sure that there had been a murder, amused Lincoln particu-
[257]
larly. "Some looked quizzical, some melancholy, and some
furiously angry. One man who had been very active in the
search for the dead body swore that he always knew the man
was not dead. Another who had cut down the mill dam and
wanted to hang the owner for objecting, went away awfully
woe-begone." He relished mightily the human comedy of the
affair and probably took no little satisfaction in his own
part in the proceedings. As a matter of fact, the case was
one of the first to win him local fame, tickling the town's
sense of humor and arousing admiration for his refusing to
follow the mob and taking the obvious line of making sure
at the start that the man was dead.
The most significant feature of this period of settling down
was the repeated intrusion into his life of the slavery question,
forcing him to take notice, to pronounce himself. It wormed
its way into his law practice as it already had into his legis-
lative practice, forcing study--.,.-decision. There were still
legal remnants of slavery in Illinois-protected vestiges of
the period before the state was made free, and there was a
persistent effort on the part of _believers in slavery to take
advantage of these legal exceptions to freedom. In 1839
Lincoln had his first experience with such an attempt. A
negro girl named Nance had been sold on condition that the
man claiming to "own" her could produce evidence that she
was his property. In spite of his failure to do this his heirs
later sued the purchaser for her price. Lincoln proved that
under the law Nance was actually free, and the court sus-
tained his claim that since this was so she could not be sold
or purchased. The case was frequently cited in future similar
suits, both within and without the state, much to Mr.
Lincoln's satisfaction.
A few years after this, however, we find him as counsel
for a Kentucky slave owner, one Maston, who had brought
[258]
into Coles County, Illinois, where he owned a farm, a negro
woman Jane and her children. This s husband was
a free man and already in the state. He and Jane believed
that by her corning, she and her children were made free, and
when her owner attempted, after two years, to take her back
to Kentucky there was wild grief and appeals for protection
to their church and acquaintances. The church promptly
refused to interfere, but a couple of prominent citizens took
up Jane's case, and one of them, a tavern keeper, sheltered
her and her family when they ran away. Coles County was
mightily stirred by the situation. Probably half of it took
the part of Jane's master and argued that he should be allowed
to do what he would with her but the other half swore that
she should never be taken from Illinois. Not only threats
of violence, but preparations for it were made by both sides.
There was much pulling and hauling in the courts, and Jane
was kept for a long period in jail for safety. Finally the
case carne before the circuit court at Charleston, and this
time U. F. Linder, Maston's lawyer and a friend of Lincoln's,
invited him in.
We have practically no documents to show what was done,
no records of speeches, but there were many which tradition
declares to have been of unusual brilliance as well as violence.
The history of the case was written some twenty-five years
ago for the Coles County Bar Association by one of its mem-
bers, D. T. Mcintyre. From "all sources existing at the
time."
Mr. Mcintyre is severe with Mr. Lincoln for his part
in the case. His argument was poor, he claims, and he gave
the case away by admitting that if Maston (Jane's master)
brought his slaves to this state to work on his farm, they
were entitled to their. freedom. The court thought so, too,
[259]
and Jane was released. Her owner, sensing the severity of
public opinion, promptly left Illinois and never returned.
Mr. Weik in his recent book, "The Real Lincoln," seems
to think it strange that Mr. Lincoln did not at this, or at
later periods, interest himself in defending runaway slaves.
He could scarcely have gone out of his way to do that, con-
sistently with his expressed views about the Fugitive Slave
Law. He always condemned its violation. Laws, good-or
bad, were to be respected; but in urging that they be respected
he made this qualification:
"When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws,
let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, or that
grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions
have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say
that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as
possible, still, while they continue in force for the sake of example,
they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases.
If such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the
least possible delay, but till then let them, if not too intolerable, be
borne with."
It is practically certain that in at least one case of a
runaway slave he acted for the defendant. This was a case
which came into the Menard County circuit court in 1845.
My attention was first called to this a few months ago by
Mr. Henry E. Pond, the State's Attorney of Menard County.
Mr. Pond's grandfather, Samuel Sweezy Pond, was a
Yankee, residing only ten miles northwest of New Salem.
He was so staunch an anti-slavery man that he was called
"Abolition" Pond, and proved his right to the title by oper-
ating a section of the Illinois Underground Railroad. Mr.
Pond's practice was to pick up the runaways at Farmingdale
in Sangamon County, cover them with tarpaulins and haul
them to his home, from whence they were carried on to the
next station which was to the north in Mason County.
[26o]
Mr. Henry Pond tells me that the conununity was so pro-
slavery in those days that the life of his grandfather was fre-
quently threatened. In 1845 they thought they had caught
one of the family at last, his brother Marvin. Some of Mr.
Lincoln's old friends, among them his schoolmaster, Mentor
Graham, and Coleman Smoot, who had loaned him the money
to outfit himself when he first went to the legislature, appeared
as witnesses against Marvin Pond, charging that he had un-
lawfully harbored a negro slave. The grand jury found him
guilty, but when the case came to trial he was acquitted. The
truth, Mr. Pond says, is that the wrong brother was named
in the indictment, Marvin B. being innocent, but Samuel
Sweezy guilty.
Now, it seems that Lincoln and one Major Harris were
the only lawyers defending criminal cases at that period in
the Menard County court. Mr. Pond thinks that Lincoln
must have defended in this case since Harris was a Democratic
Congressman of strong pro-slavery views. His reason for not
having positive proof of this is that "souvenir hunters have
purloined from our court records every paper in the hand-
writing of Lincoln. The only pleading written by the counsel
in the case against Pond is the motion to quash the indict-
ment, and that is the only paper missing from the files." Mr.
Pond is probably right in thinking that it is gone because
Lincoln wrote it.
Another reason that Mr. Weik gives in his recent book
for thinking Lincoln lukewarm on the slavery question at this
period is that he finds no evidence that he supported the
efforts in Springfield to found a colonization society for
negroes. He fails to note, however, that Mr. Lincoln in
his eulogy of Clay in 1852 gives emphatic approval to the
society:
[261]
"This suggestion of the possible redemption of the African race
and African continent was made twenty-five years ago. Every suc-
ceeding year has added strength to the hope of its realization. . May
it indeed be realized. Pharaoh's country was cursed with plagues, and
his hosts were lost in the Red Sea, for striving to retain a captive
people who had already served them more than four hundred years.
May like disasters never befall us! If, as the friends of colonization
hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by
any means succeed in. freeing our land from the dangerous presence
of slavery, and at the same time in restoring a captive people to their
long-lost fatherland with bright prospects for the future, and this
too so gradually that neither races nor individuals shall have suf-
fered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation."
This doesn't sound lukewarm; and, as we shall see later,
he followed up his opinion with repeated attempts to realize
it when he was in a position of power.
No, convinced as Lincoln was at this time that all laws
concerning slavery must be observed-in the very interest of
its final extinction-he was not pussy-footing, publicly or
privately. In his temperance address in 1842 from which I
have already quoted he declared that the fall of slavery and
the overthrow of intemperance would be the most powerful
allies of the cause of political freedom. "And when the vic-
tory shall be complete," he exclaimed,-"when there shall be
neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth,-how proud the
title of that land which may truly claim to be the birthplace
and the cradle of both these revolutions that shall have ended
in that victory."
That very day, Washington's Birthday, he repeated the
idea in a letter written to his young friend, George E. Pickett
-the Pickett of the famous charge at Gettysburg. I heard
the story a number of years ago from Mrs. General Pickett,
who for years lived in Washington, an employee of the Gov-
ernment. Her husband, who lived in Illinois in his youth,
was appointed to a cadetship in West Point by Lincoln's part-
[262]
ner, . Major Stuart, who was at that time in Congress. Mr.
Stuart made this appointment at Lincoln's request, and now
the boy was off and Lincoln seems to have felt that it was his
business to give him some parting advice.
"I have just told the folks here in Springfield on this lllth an
niversary of the birth of him whose name, mightiest in the cause of
civil liberty, still mightiest in the cause of moral reformation, we
mention in solemn awe, in naked, deathless splendor, that the one
victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims
that there is not one slave or one drunkard on the face of God's green
earth. Recruit for this victory.
* * * * * * *
"Now, boy, on your march, don't you go and forget the old maxim
that 'one drop of honey catches more flies than a half-gallon of gall.'
Load your musket with this maxim, and smoke it in your pipe."
Busy as Mr. Lincoln was with the law at this time, he
was not forgetting his political fences. Indeed I get the
impression from a reading of letters and speeches, augmented
as they have been in recent years by pieces not found in his
socalled complete works, that public life was what his heart
was really set on, not the law. After serving four terms in
the state assembly, in 1842 he refused reelection. He wanted
to go to Washington. Through the period of his stormy court
ship, his marriage, his hustling to increase his practice that
he might have money to support a family, that had been his
serious ambition. These letters show how at this time he was
building up. a political technique, a code of political ethics,
very essential to understand. if we are to understand him and
what he did later. Politics with Abraham Lincoln was no
purely selfish matter: He had reasons for going into public
life which were wrapped up with his political philosophy and
his ambition to serve the world. He had his own notions of
how. to accomplish the_se ambitions, consistently with his moral
code.
XXI
LINCOLN THE POLITICIAN
0
NE of Abraham Lincoln's most engaging qualities as a
politician was his frankness. It first showed itself in
his openly expressed desire for public 'Office. Every American
boy had the right to try for the presidency, why not he'? His
devoted Indiana friend, Josiah Crawford, used. to tell of
asking him one day as he watched him stretched along the
floor with a book, his lower lip "stuck out" as always in times
of concentration:
"Abe-what you goin' to be'?"
"I'm going to be President, Uncle Jo," was his prompt
reply.
Wise and garrulous old-timers in more than one neighbor-
hood of Illinois as well as Indiana, watching the boy, sensed
ambition in him and prophesied its fulfillment. It came early
to consciousness and though he might doubt his opportunity
and ability to realize it, he never denied nor concealed it.
Not a few students of his life, particularly in these latter
years, lean to the theory that his political ambitions needed
a prod, and that Mary Lincoln was the one that the Lord
The records of his early life certainly shatter this
theory. He had been active in Illinois politics for seven
years, an officeholder for five years, and was planning for
Congress before he met Mary Lincoln.
Three months after his marriage he emphasized his plan
by writing to one of his political friends: "If you should
hear any one say that Lincoln don't want to go to Congress,
[2641
I wish you, as a personal friend of mine, would tell him you
have reason to believe he is mistaken. The truth is I would
like to go very much. . . . If there are any who would
be my friends in such an enterprise what I want now is that
they shall not throw me away just yet." (The letter in which
this appears belongs to the fine collection of new letters first
published six years ago by Gilbert Tracy.)
No doubt but that Mary Lincoln was interested in his
going to Congress; he surely found satisfaction in their com-
mon ambition, but he needed none of her pushing at this time.
He was frank about it, and he also was practical-prac-
tical in a way that cost him 'something of a wrench at the
start. He had held as sacred Americanism the then prevailing
practice of self-nomination for office. You offered yourself
to the voters in an address, and on this platform made your
own campaign-everybody had a chance and the people
decided. Then in 1835 the Democrats-wickedly, in the
judgment of the Whigs-brought from the East a new
political instrument-the convention. The Whigs fought it
bitterly at the start; but it was not many years before they
found that they were completely at their enemy's mercy-
they must either organize or go out of business.
At the time of his marriage, Mr. Lincoln was mulling
over the argument for the convention system, and four months
later he presented it at a Whig meeting held in Springfield
-an excellent piece of candid political logic. The time was
past for discussing whether the system was right in itself or
not. The simple fact was that "while our opponents use it,
it is madness in us not to defend ourselves with it." It is
interesting to find him using in this argument a maxim of
practical philosophy which he was to employ in an unfor-
gettable way a few years later. "That union is strength," he
said, "is a truth that has been known in all ages of the world.
[265]
That great fabulist and philosopher lEsop illustrated it by
his fable of the bundle of sticks; and He whose wisdom sur-
passes that of all philosophers has declared that 'a house
divided against itself cannot stand!' "
The convention system was adopted by the Illinois Whigs
on this argument of Lincoln's, and the machinery put in order.
There were protests-plenty of them. He was obliged on the
platform, by letter, in conversation, to fight for his decision.
And he did it with spirit and candor-it was expediency, you
might like it or not, but it was the thing that must be done
if you were to meet the enemy.
Lincoln saw clearly enough that there might be difficulty
in applying the convention system-"incidents temporarily
painful," as he said; but I hardly think he could have fore-
seen that in the very first convention of his Congressional
district he was to suffer from such an incident. He was a
candidate as he had made clear he meant to be, but two of
his friends were also candidates. One of these was as dear
a friend as he ever had-an Englishman by birth-Edward
D. Baker, the man for whom he named his second son, a
Springfield neighbor, an assembly colleague for some six years
now; the other was a friend of both his and Baker, General
John J. Hardin, of Jacksonville, his colleague in the assembly
since 1836.
Lincoln saw at once that he did not have a chance before
the convention. Some of his chickens were coming home to
roost. He had mightily offended a powerful element in the
community by his duel, and he had chilled the ardor of some
of his aggressively democratic friends in the county by his
marriage-he had joined the aristocracy! The contest was
between Baker and Hardin, and finally Baker, in an eloquent
and magnanimous speech, withdrew. On the instant Lincoln
executed one of those quick-witted political manreuvers for
[266]
which he had a genius. Sensing the gratitude that Hardin's
supporters felt toward Baker, he proposed, before it had time
to cool, that the convention recommend Baker for the next
term!
The Hardin men naturally did not like it, but, in Baker's
debt as they were, they could not decently refuse and the
recommendation was adopted. The inference from it was
-certainly in the minds of Lincoln and Baker and their
respective supporters-that in 1847, after Baker's term,
Lincoln would be nominated. It was a quixotic effort to
establish a principle of turn about when friends of equal
ability were candidates-an impracticable and, on the whole,
unwise idea-unwise because a single term in Congress
amounts to little politically for either the man or his constitu-
ency. It takes one term to learn the ropes.
There was no trouble in 1845. Baker was nominated and
elected, but by 1847 the ardor of the district for the principle
of rotation had cooled a little. Baker withdrew in Lincoln's
favor, but Hardin did not feel himself bound so to do. He
announced his candidacy, and Lincoln had on his hands a
problem which, for one of his temperament, was both ticklish
and distasteful. He wanted to go to Congress-no doubt
about that; he felt that under the plan of turnabout is fair
play he should go. But at the same time he wanted to keep
Hardin's friendship. How was such a situation to be
handled'?
He held tenaciously to his ambition and frankly let
Hardin understand that he intended, under no circumstances,
to withdraw. He also made it clear he would not quarrel.
When Hardin proposed several novelties in the political
practice of the district which Lincoln saw would put him
at a disadvantage, as no doubt was the intention, he good-
naturedly refused and frankly pointed out the inferences of
[267]
the arrangement. He was candid but shrewd in his gener
osity almost to the point of cunning.
New flashes of light have been thrown in recent years
upon this significant exhibit of the political technique Lincoln
was building by the discovery of several letters. None of
these are more characteristic than one which first appeared
in Gilbert Tracy's collection. Among other things it shows
his political pride. Lincoln was always jealous of his fitness
for office. A supporting newspaper had argued that he should
be nominated instead of Hardin because the principle of
rotation in Congress for Whigs had been adopted in 1843; he
protested warmly. He didn't care whether it had been or
not, he wrote his correspondent. "If I am not in what I
have done and am able to do for the party near enough the
equal to General Hardin to entitle me to a nomination now
that he had one, I scorn it on any and all other grounds."
Another characteristic point in this letter is the treatment
of certain "mean insinuations" against him in the local press.
He sends a friendly editor in the territory material to demolish
them. "You may use it as you please," he writes. "I prefer,
however, that you should show it to some of our friends, and
not publish it, unless in your judgment it becomes rather
urgently necessary. The reason I want to keep all points of
controversy out of the papers, so far as possible, is that it
will be just all we can do to keep out of a quarrel-and I
am resolved to do my part to keep peace." That is, he would
meet every accusation, but do it in a way which would not
create more dissension-not "start anything" !
His tenacity, his at times almost plaintive frankness, his
refusal to quarrel with Hardin or to let his friends quarrel
with Hardin's friends-and they certainly did give some
provocation, although, as Lincoln candidly said: "We have
probably been just as much at fault"-his cleverness in
[268]
strategy seem finally to have persuaded Hardin that there was
no hope for him, and ?e rather begrudgingly withdrew. In
May, 1846, Lincoln was nominated.
Mr. Lincoln was a hearty campaigner-but he
worked for himself now no better than he had worked for
Hardin and Baker, though quite as well. He thought of
everything, knew everything, neglected nothing. Looking
over his published letters I find that he had a correspondent
in almost every town of any size in his district. If he heard
there was somebody disgruntled, he asked a friend to find
out what the trouble was-arrange matters. He read the
.local papers and let no distorted story go unanswered. He
was strong for parades and barbecues, speech-making, singing,
"hollering." "Gather up the shrewd wild boys about town,"
organize them, "let every one play the part he can play best,"
was his counsel to his law partner, Herndon, when he was
passing through a period of political depression.
He made so many speeches himself that he was known
as the "talking Whig." The legal work which took him from
county seat to county seat in his district attending sessions
of the circuit court gave ample opportunity. The political
leaders took advantage of the presence of the court to arrange
for meetings at the noon recess as well as after adjournment
at night. Usually these meetings were held in the court
yard, a wide platform being put up for the campaign.
Henry B. Rankin in his "Recollections" describes a
gathering of this kind at the fall session of the
County Circuit Court in which Lincoln was a central figure.
Rankin was a boy of only ten acting as a court messenger,
but the heat of debate, the lusty interest of the crowd,
Lincoln's cordiality to his old neighbors, their pride in him,
seem always to have remained fresh in his memory. His
comment on Lincoln's appearance at this time is worth noting.
[26g]
He says he was the "best looking lawyer attending the Peters
burg Circuit Court"-his color fresh, his muscles well
developed, a man overflowing with physical vigor and health.
I am convinced that Mr. Rankin is much nearer the truth
than are the score or more of Lincoln's contemporaries who
vie with one another in drawing caricatures of him.
There is a serious misconception among many of the kind
of speech that he was delivering at this time. "A string of
stories," more than one biographer has said. He told stories,
of course, but incidentally. For the most part the stories
came in story-telling bouts, in conversation, in wayside
speeches-very few of them in his serious discussions. If any.
one will take the trouble to examine the printed reports of
all Lincoln's speeches, from the first one at Vandalia in 1837
up to his going to Congress ten years later, he will find in their
many thousands of words but few stories.
His quick-witted political repartee was often more
effective than his stories. One of the most telling retorts
that Lincoln ever made belongs to this campaign. His Demo-
cratic opponent was Peter Cartwright, that violent, fighting,
Western parson, one of the most picturesque characters of the
time. He had a tremendous following. No matter where he
went he was sure of an audience. Mr. A. L. Beall of Hender-
son County, Illinois, tells me of an old lady whom he once
asked if she had heard Mr. Lincoln when he spoke in that
county in the fall of' 58. "No," she said, "we never took the
trouble to go to hear him, but we always drove across the
county to hear Peter Cartwright!" There were plenty of
people who felt the same way. In the campaign of '46 Cart-
wright held a characteristic religious revival service in Spring-
field. Mr. Lincoln dropped in one night to hear him. When
Cartwright was urging sinners to come to the mourners' bench
he often appealed by name to persons in his audience, and this
[270]
night, seeing Mr. Lincoln, he began to urge him forward,
finally shouting: "If you are not going to repent and go to
Heaven, Mr. Lincoln, where are you going'?"
Lincoln slowly rose to his feet.
"I am going to Congress, Brother Cartwright."
Quick as was his wit, pointed as were his stories, it was not
on them but on substantial argument that he depended-
argument on the wisdom of a protective tariff, the necessity
of a national bank, the division of the public moneys among
the states, the improvement of rivers and harbors-that is,
discussion of the practical, everyday problems of getting
money to run the federal and state governments and to build
up the country.
It is only now and then that one catches a glimmer in
his political work of the question of human rights which
was simmering beneath. The Abolitionists were increasing-
increasing in Illinois-though it was only now and then as
he went about that he ran upon them. It was one of these
unexpected encounters that brought out the one statement
which we have to show how he felt about the matter in the
middle forties.
In sounding two of his old acquaintances, he had dis-
covered to his surprise that they were "Liberty inen," as one
branch of the Abolitionists called themselves. They could
not support the Whig platform: it neglected the slavery ques-
tion. They were particularly violent about the annexation
of Texas. In justice to himself, Lincoln wanted to get down
on paper for them just how he felt. It was hard for him-
a man of common sense-to understand. why Liberty men,
who looked on the annexation of Texas as a much greater
evil than he ever had, had refused to join the Whigs to
prevent it. The Whigs had opposed it. "Why then," he
w ~ o t his friends, "did you Liberty men not unite with us'?
[271]
If you had, Mr. Clay would have been President, Texas
would not have been annexed." Their retort was: "You
must not do evil that good may come."
"This general proposition," wrote Lincoln, "is doubtless correct;
but did it apply'? If by your votes you could have prevented the exten-
sion, etc., of slavery, would it not have been good and not evil so to
have used your votes, even though it involved the cast of them for a
slaveholder'? By the fruit the tree is to be known. An evil tree cannot
bring forth good fruit. If the fruit of electing Mr. Clay would have
been to prevent the extension of slavery, could the act of electing have
been evil '?''
Much more important than the argument of the practical
get-what-you-can reformer was a definite statement in the
letter as to what he believed to be the only legal and therefore
right treatment of slavery:
"I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free States, due to
the Union of the States, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though
it may seem), to let the slavery of the other States alone; while, on
the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear that we should never
knowingly lend ourselves, directly or indirectly, to prevent that
slavery from dying a natural death-to find new places for it to live
in when it can no longer exist in the old."
A Fabian, you see, a step-by-step-take-what-you-can-get-
within-the-law man-there lies liberty. If this is all the
expression we have of the period, at least there is no mis-
t k ~ n g his meaning or denying that he had thought seriously
on the matter.
When the election came Lincoln defeated Cartwright, but
somehow the flavor of success had gone. It did not please
him as much as he had expected, he wrote Speed. What he
had won another wanted-that other his friend. A man's
life was built around his friends. Was a term in Congress
worth the coolness he felt in Hardin and his supporters'? This
vague dissatisfaction could not but have been intensified in
[272]
the February following when news came back to Illinois that
Hardin had been killed in the battle of Buena Vista.
He had little time for brooding. As Congressman-elect
he was now a personage, receiving calls which would not
otherwise have come to him. Most important of these was his
appointment as a delegate to the great River and Harbor
Convention held in Chicago in July, 1847-the first national
convention called to that city.
It is surprising but true that Lincoln biographers should
all have overlooked his membership in that extraordinary
gathering. For my part, I never heard of the River and
Harbor Convention of 1847 until some three years ago Mr.
James Shaw of the Aurora (Illinois) Public Library wrote me
an accusing letter asking why I had not taken it into account
in recording Mr. Lincoln's contacts with the larger world at
this time. Mr. Shaw very rightly claimed that the convention
must have influenced and enlightened him. As a matter of
fact it was at this convention that Lincoln first met any large
group of those "big men" about whom he was always so
curious and with whom he never lost an opportunity to com-
pare check up on his limitations, appraise his values.
When I confessed ignorance Mr. Shaw generously wrote
me an informal account of the convention which I quote
below. He has since prepared a more elaborate paper, but
the extract from his letter of three years ago serves better our
purpose here, which is of course to emphasize the importance
of the first national gathering of which Lincoln was a member.
"In August, 1846," writes Mr. Shaw, "President Polk sent to Con-
gress a message vetoing a bill that made appropriations to the extent
of $1,378,450 for the improvement of certain rivers and harbors.
There were at that time two schools of political thought in the country.
One school, called 'Strict Constructionists,' held that Congress had
no power to do what the Constitution did not specifically authorize.
Internal improvements were not, in so many words, authorized, and
[273]
therefore appropriations for that purpose were unconstitutional. The
other school held to a more liberal construction of the powers granted
to Congress by the Constitution. That instrument gave to Congress
power 'to regulate commerce. with foreign nations, and among the
several States.' Under this power it was contended that appropriations
for internal improvements were constitutional. President Polk was a
strict constructionist, and his message was an argument along the lines
held by that school of political thought.
"The veto aroused great opposition throughout the country, and
particularly in the North and West. The people of the growing
lake ports, Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Chicago, and the
sections tributary to them, were especially angry. A m o ~ m n t was
at once set on foot to voice the popular sentiment for internal improve-
ments. A preliminary organization was effected, which called a con
vention to meet in Chicago, July 5, 6 and 7, 1847. In the way of re-
flecting popular interest in a subject,. no convention ever held in the
country was a greater success .
"Chicago at that time was a rather rough frontier town, with a
population of about 16,ooo. Not a single line of railroad had yet
reached the city. Entrance into and exit from it had to be made by sail
or steam on the lake, or by carriage or horseback on land. That, under
such circumstances, the question of internal improvements should
have brought to the little city a crowd conservatively. estimated at
20,000, nearly one-half of whom were certified delegates, is certainly
marvellous. Chicago was quite unable to take care of the crowd.
Its hospitality had the cordial character of a new, proud, ambitious
and terribly self-conscious community. But it was simply over-
whelmed. Thousands of visitors camped in the streets. Hundreds
found accommodations in the lake vessels that brought them to the
city. The convention held its meetings in a big tent, politely called
a 'pavilion.'
"The convention was scarcely less remarkable for the character
and position of many of its delegates than for the numbers in at
tendance. Its permanent president was Edward Bates, an eminent
lawyer of St. Louis, a candidate for the Republican nomination for
President in the convention of 186o, and Attorney General in . the
cabinet of President Lincoln. From New York came David Dudley
Field, justly considered one of the country's leading lawyers, a mem-
ber of a family famous for its achievements in many lines of endeavor.
One of his brothers was the promoter of the first ocean telegraph
cable ; a third was the editor of a very successful religious paper.
[274]
"Other delegates from New York were Horace Greeley, then just
rising into fame as the editor of the most influential journal the
country has ever known; and Thurlow Weed, editor of the Albany
Journal, one of our early political bosses, one of the best of his kind,
and the guide, counsellor and friend of William H. Seward.
"The wonderfully eloquent Tom Corwin, Governor of Ohio, just
elected United States Senator, was a delegate, and took an active part
in the proceedings. Other delegates from Ohio were Governor Bebb
and former Governors Warren and Morrow. Stanley Matthews,
later a United States Senator, and Justice of the United States Supreme
Court, came also from Ohio.
"There were present a score or more of future Congressmen, young
men eager to represent a young and growing country, and perhaps
not less than a dozen actual or potential governors of States.
"Illinois was represented by many of its ablest citizens. Several
counties sent more than fifty delegates each. Farnsworth, future
Congressman from the Kane County district, Washburne, destined
to represent the Jo Daviess district, and Long John Wentworth, already
in Congress from Chicago. These and many others then unknown to
fame were there. From Sangamon County came Abraham Lincoln. .
"One Illinoian was conspicuous by his absence-Stephen Arnold
Douglas. The 'Little Giant' had a few months before been elected
United States Senator from Illinois. He was possibly a strict con-
structionist. In any event, it is probable that he did not care to begin
his Senatorial career by antagonizing the administration.
"Letters were received from some of the most distinguished men
in the country. Daniel Webster wrote a 3,000-word letter, in which
he argued with great power the constitutional right of Congress to
appropriate money for . internal improvements. Henry Clay wrote a
cordial letter commending the purpose for which the convention was
assembled. Letters were also received from ex-President Van Buren,
from Senator Lewis Cass and Senator Thomas H. Benton.
"Abraham Lincoln took a modest but most effective part in that
convention. It was his first visit to Chicago. The previous fall he
had been elected to Congress, the only Whig representative from
Illinois. By political affiliation he was an internal improvement man.
He was therefore in hearty sympathy with the views which the con-
vention had been called to express. It was the first opportunity that
he had ever enjoyed to appear on what might be called a national stage.
He there had the chance to measure himself with some of the big men
of the country. David Dudley Field was there to hold the convention
[275]
in check if possible. He made an able speech, counseling conservative
action and moderate statement. But the convention was in no mood
for moderation. Lincoln was called to answer Field. This he did,
as Mr. Greeley said, 'briefly and happily.'"
In his formal article Mr. Shaw quotes Greeley's report
in full:
"Abraham Lincoln, a tall specimen of an Illinoian, just elected to
Congress from the only Whig district in the . State was called out and
spoke briefly and happily in reply to Mr. Field."
That is all, though Mr. Shaw says there is a tradition that
Lincoln answered Mr. Field's objection to doing anything
for the improvement of the Illinois River because it ran
through a single state by asking through how many states the
Hudson (a federally improved stream) ran!
More than one "great man" remembered not only his
speech but other things about him-his greed for people, his
skill in making acquaintances, arresting attention, not merely,
as so many have slightingly said, by his stories, but by his
interest in subjects, his remarkable skill in getting a man's
ideas, sounding his information. Men in Chicago at the River
and Harbor Convention who ran up against Lincoln no more
.forgot him than those who knew him first in Decatur in 1831
or in Sangamon County in 1832. He was somebody-you
knew it at the start.
Of course Lincoln locally was very much of a political
somebody at the moment. The Whig newspaper, the Chicago
Journal, emphasized this.
"Abraham Lincoln, the only Whig representative to Congress from
this State, we are happy to see in attendance upon the convention.
This is his first visit to the commercial emporium of the State. We
have no doubt his first visit will impress him more deeply, if possible,
with the importance and inspire a higher zeal for the great interest of
the River and Harbor improvements.
[276]
"We expect much from him as a representative in Congress, and
we have p.o doubt our expectations will be more than realized, for
never was reliance placed in a nobler heart and a sounder judgment.
We know the banner he bears will never be soiled."
Abraham Lincoln had a great deal to think of as he jogged
back the more than one hundred and fifty miles to Spring
field on horseback, if that is the way he traveled! Three
months more and 'he would be in Washington-a member of
Congress. How did Congress look to him after this first ex-
perience with the kind of timber of which it was made'? How
did he feel about himself'? Not less confident, I take it. The
convention had probably only whetted his appetite for closer
and longer contact with "great men."
Three months later and he and Mary Lincoln were on
their way to Washington, going by Kentucky, giving them
a chance of course to see the Speeds and the T odds.
[277]
XXII
THE FIRST TERM IN CONGRESS
W
HEN Abraham Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois, in
November, 1847, to take his seat as a member of
the Thirtieth Congress, he must have felt much of that inner
excitement and anticipation which goes with one's first de-
liberate journey abroad. Not since the years when, as a boat
hand, he had traveled the Mississippi to New Orleans had
he made a real journey-never had he made one under so
happy and promising circumstances. He was like a hard-
worked man who, tied by responsibilities all his life, has come
to a point where he can break away, go to Europe, to the
Orient-"see the world."
Things had been put into pretty good shape at home.
His young law partner, Billy Herndon, now two years with
him, if inexperienced and temperamental, was loyal to the
core, proud of his chief, asking nothing better than to labor
and to sacrifice for him. He had rented his house for ninety
dollars for the year; he was taking Mary Lincoln and Bob
and Ed-theone four years old, the other eighteen months.
He was going to visit his Kentucky friends and relatives, and
then, for the first time, to see Washington.
He would look forward to that. His patriotism was too
pure and strong a sentiment for him not to feel that the capital
of the country was a sacred place. He probably saw it more
or less with the eyes of the engravers of the period, who cer-
tainly made it a beautiful thing-ignoring its defects, pictur-
[278]
ing it as it was hoped it one day would be. The town, when
Mr. Lincoln first saw it, had its beautiful spots: the
Capitol and its immediate surroundings, a few fine old
homes, with their great gardens, the White House; but in
reality it was a straggling and disorderly place. Penn-
sylvania Avenue, the heart of the town, was roughly c ~ b b l e d
only partially built up, and many of its buildings low and
mean. The Tiber (alias Goose Creek) rambled down .from
the northeast across the avenue into the Potomac, which
thrust irregular, sluggish arms into what is now the Mall and
the beautiful Potomac Drive. Animals fed and rooted in the
fields below the Capitol and the White House, while in every
direction were scattered squalid settlements of negroes-Crow
Hill, Negro Hill, Swampdoodle. But these unpleasant sights
did not interfere with a buoyant, dignified and even brilliant
social life. Washington had some 36,ooo inhabitants at this
time, and most of them were in the streets on pleasant days.
Robert Cruikshank's cartoon of the White House of the
forties gives a notion of afternoons and evenings in the
vicinity of the President's mansion. Here all the Washington
world drove and promenaded, and in the throng you might
meet anybody-Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, Mr. Calhoun, even
the President himself walked almost daily in the crowd.
Although everybody promenaded near the White House,
members of Congress usually lived near the Capitol. There
were probably seventy-five or a hundred boarding houses on
Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill-Congressmen's
messes. The Lincolns went to Capitol Hill.
It is a mistake to think of Lincoln in this first Washing-
ton experience as a strange or lonely man. Already he knew
very well most of the members of the Illinois delegation-
one of them very well, indeed, and for a long time had had
his opinion of him-the most brilliant and successful man
[279]
that had come out of Illinois, Stephen A. Douglas, just elected
to the United States Senate, and inclined to patron:ize his
colleague of the thirties in the Illinois assembly. He remem-
bered Mr. Lincoln, oh, yes. He had served with him in the
legislature back in '36, but Mr. Lincoln had been "sub-
merged," lost sight of as a public man since. As for himself,
well, of course, he had always been in sight!
Lincoln knew the Illinois people, and he knew well the
record of every man of importance in Congress-knew it from
first-hand study of congressional documents-a political litera-
ture easy to obtain, and which he had always followed zeal-
ously. He knew fairly well the currents of opinion in the
localities from which these men came-knew it from his wide
reading of newspapers. Thus he had a substantial background
of knowledge of men and opinions in the body of which he
was to become a member.
One gets an impression from a reading of his letters and
speeches and the recollections of him men have set down at
this period, of a man taking hold with zest, making the most
of every contact. His colleagues in the mess at Mrs. Sprigg's
on Capitol Hill found at once and with delight that the tall
Whig from Illinois was a wonderful table companion-mod-
est, a good listener, gentle, full of fun, quick at repartee, a
side-splitting story-teller-and, more still, a very serious and
thoughtful fellow. In more than one established informal
group-the kind of gathering inclined to be jealous of its per-
sonnel, slow to admit newcomers to intimacy, Lincoln, after a
few days on the outskirts, was received into full fellowship.
It was so at the bowling alley on the hill, at the group of
choice story-tellers in the House postoffice, at Mr. Webster's
breakfasts. In all these gatherings he came to be looked for,
welcomed warmly, remembered after his term was over. More
than one writer of his reminiscences of Washington in '48
[28o]
and thereabouts has left a picture of Abraham Lincoln m
these groups, something definite, characteristic.
He went to work at once-a little more freely, from a
political point of view, perhaps, than if he had been a candi-
date for reelection. He was not. He had repeatedly an-
nounced in his campaign that he still held to the principle of
turnabout, which he had unwisely brought into being in the
convention of 1843. He knew that his former law partner,
Stephen A. Logan, was a candidate, and he felt that it was
right that he should have the next term. Logan had worked
faithfully for him-indeed, had made the speech nominating
him. He did not intend to stand in his way, and when Billy
Herndon and others wanted to go to work at once to make
ready for his reelection, he quite decidedly put his foot down.
He was not a candidate-not if Logan was. This fact, how-
ever, had nothing to do with his energy and firmness in taking
hold of congressional work.
Lincoln seems to have gone to Washington with the idea
of making the tariff his principal interest-at least the tariff
was the only issue, so far as we know, for which. he had made
special preparations. With Congressmen, however, as with
men and women in most positions of responsibility, it is
usually not the thing that you prepare to do that you do do.
He never had a chance to make his tariff speech. He dropped
it to accept the challenge President Polk threw down in his
message. Polk was determined not only to get supplies for
the Mexican War then in progress, but a vote declaring it a
just and necessary war. He insisted that Mexico had made
the war inevitable by "invading our territory" and "shedding
the blood of our fellow citizens on our soil." This was too
much for Lincoln, who had always contended that Polk had
not only provoked the war, but begun it unconstitutionally.
He took issue at once with the effort of the Administration to
[281]
get a clean bill of health. "Where was the spot," he asked,
"on which the blood of our citizens was shed'?" "Was it in
our territory or in Mexican territory'?" His questions were
so cleverly phrased, the arraignment of the President with
which he followed up his "spot resolutions" so able, that the
Whig side of the House was delighted. Here was a recruit
worth cultivating. They saw in Lincoln at once certain im-
portant political qualities-that he was not afraid to speak
his mind even in a body like Congress, which might naturally
be expected to awe him into silence for a time. As a matter
of fact, Lincoln found himself at once quite at home on the
floor, "about as badly scared and no more as I am when I
speak in court." The Whigs found him informed-with a
genuine interest in facts, willing to work to get them, and
surprisingly cunning in handling them. All this brought him
at once into the inner confidential Whig circle, busy at the
moment in selecting a candidate for the presidential election
of 1848.
All of this Lincoln enjoyed. He was popular, trusted,
listened to, admitted. But his success with the Whig circle
in Washington had an offsetting feature at home. He prob-
ably had not foreseen that his fight on Polk would shock his
district. The Sangamon country might be Whig in principle,
but it would not stand for criticism of a war while the war
was on. More than one of his good friends, Billy Herndon
among them, protested. Herndon was thrown into a panic
by the harm his course was doing to his political strength.
There is nothing that shows Lincoln's capacity for clear
thinking and expression at this period as well as his intellec-
tual firmness when he had come to a conclusion which he be-
lieved sound, better than the letters that he wrote to his Illinois
critics. There was one to a minister, the Rev. J. M. Peck,
in his best controversial form, strongly suggestive of many
[282]
a letter which he was to write in the last six years of his life.
He drove the question of the war down to the facts. What
were. the facts'? He reviewed them-the invasion of Ameri- _
cans into peaceful Mexican territory:
". What is the result of your reflections upon them'?" he asked.
"If you deny that they are facts, I think I can furnish proofs which
shall convince you that you are mistaken. If you admit that they are
facts, then I shall be obliged for a reference to any law of language,
law of states, law of nations, law of morals, law of religions, any
law, human or divine, in which an authority can be found for saying
those facts constitute 'no aggression.'
"Possibly you consider those acts too small for notice. Would you
venture to so consider them had they been committed by any nation
on earth against the humblest of our people'? I know you would not.
Then I ask, is the precept 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do
to you, do you even so to them' obsolete'? Of no force'? Of no
application'?"
Pretty spirited, clear-headed expression this-not at all
a man, as some biographers have hinted, that did not know
his own mind. Throughout the year there was no outward
political wavering. He welcomed the nomination in June of
General Zachariah Taylor-depending of course upon his war
record, his freedom from any kind of political alliance, will-
ing even to slide over the fact that he was a slave owner,
and, so far as anybody knew, had no views of any sort on the
slavery question. He went with alacrity into the campaign
and kept it up to the election, going to New England in the
fall, and then home to steady political speaking.
If we put together all that we have of his writing and
speaking in the year we find hardly a hint of the fact that he
had been following in the Thirtieth Congress a tremendous
and prophetic discussion-a discussion in which there came
out all those shades of opinion and of emotion on the question
of slavery which later were to grow and harden until they
drove all other opinions and emotions from men's minds,
[283]
assuming finally such vigor and power that men no longer
could control them, became their puppets, and fell back on
war to settle that which mind and conscience had started, but
were still too undeveloped to carry on to logical peaceful
conclusion.
It was the acquisition and government of new territory
that forced slavery to the front. There was Oregon-Texas
-the land that we were compelling Mexico to sell us-
should they all be free'? Should Congress declare them free,
as in 1787 it had declared the Northwest'? David Wilmot
of Pennsylvania had attached an amendment to the bill ap-
propriating money for settling with Mexico, which made the
funds conditional on slavery being excluded forever from any
portion of the acquired territory. The South incensed, fought
the proviso. Lincoln heard his friend Alexander H. Stephens
of Georgia go so far as to threaten, if the combined vote of
the North carried the Wilmot proviso, it would be for the
South to take her own course-and he-why he would go with
her-secession!
He listened to violent and noisy arraignments of the in-
stitution by men from free states-ridiculed by men from
slave states. He heard attacks and defenses-constitutional
-economic-social-religious. He heard the doctrine of
"squatter sovereignty" announced and defended.
And at intervals he heard long protests from those who
wanted to "do business," at the folly of allowing what
Thomas Benton called the "pestiferous question" to absorb
the whole thought of Congress. This "black question," he
cried, "rises forever on the table. It is like the plague of
frogs-everywhere." "l remember a time," Benton com-
plained, "when no one would have thought of asking a public
man what his opinion was on the extension of slavery any
[284]
more than what was the length of his foot." Happy days-
gone forever !
Forty-one different members of the House of Representa-
tives and thirty-seven Senators spoke on one side or the other
of the slavery question in this session-spoke long, sometimes
wisely, often violently-but through it all Lincoln never
raised his voice, save every time he had a chance to vote
"yea" on the Wilmot proviso. That far he was clear-had
always been clear: new territory must be free territory.
l-Ie might keep quiet in Congress- . -content himself with
a vote; but when he came to campaigning, it was going to be
different. He saw a crumbling of the old parties going on in
the North-bolting Whigs, bolting who
demanded louder, clearer, more unmistakable expressions on
keeping the new territories free-people who not only wanted
these expressions, but wanted denunciations of slavery as an
evil, wanted to defy those who were supporting and profiting
by it. And he saw rising, too, North and South in spots, some-
thing which looked like fighting blood, preparing to back
demands.
While he sat franking documents in Washington after
the adjournment of Congress, waiting for certain speaking
engagements which had been arranged for him in the month
of September in Massachusetts, more and more signs and
sounds of the defection c.ame to him. While he was still
there in Washington, bolting Democrats and Free Sailers held
a convention in Buffalo, New York, by a man that he
already looked on as one of the great men of the country,
Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. There was no mistaking how this
convention felt about slavery. Their slogan showed it: "Free
Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, Free Men." So, when he came
to cast up the account of New England, to which he was going,
he found the Whigs had lost there some of their best names-
[285]
and lost them because of the nomination of Taylor and his
undefined position on the question of slavery.
Lincoln felt that it was not going to be possible for him
to depend for speaking material in Massachusetts on the sins
of the Polk Administration or the military record of General
Taylor-he must meet the slavery issue.
His first engagement was to speak at a convention of the
Whigs to be held in Worcester, and it was in this first speech
that he set down that which shows clearly where he stood-
imperfect as our report of the speech is-in the long scale of
opinion on slavery. It shows, too, his temper.
"The people of Illinois," he told his great Worcester
audience, "agreed entirely with the people of Massachusetts
on this subject, except perhaps they did not keep so constantly
thinking about it. All agreed that slavery was an evil, but
that we were not responsible for it and cannot affect it in
states of this Union where we do not live. But the question
of the extension of slavery to new territories of this country
is a part of our responsibility and care, and is under our
control."
So much for his views and his temper. His real task,
however, was to back up New England Whigs who were
wavering because of their feeling that neither platform nor
candidates were satisfactory on the subject of the extension
of slavery. Lincoln's argument was one of expediency.
They had a program, he declared; that program could only
be interpreted as against the extension of slavery. And as
for the "self-named Free Soil party," what had they to offer
but opposition'? You settled nothing by opposition. Your
intelligence was given you to find a way, a plan, work out
something. That was what the Whigs were trying to do.
And as for the Democrats who had stood with the South,
what could you expect of them'? Was it not absurd to
[286]
suppose the party that had annexed the territory against the
protests of Whigs and Free Soilers could be depended upon
to do anything toward keeping slavery out of it'?
He made his impression-so strong an impression that in-
vitations to speak poured in on him .from all directions. He
spoke at several points in the vicinity of Boston, and finally
in Tremont Temple in Boston, on the same platform with
Governor Seward. Seward in essence stood at this moment
with Lincoln. The difference between them was the differ-
ence Lincoln had noted at Worcester between Illinois and
Massachusetts. Seward was "constantly thinking about it"
-Lincoln was not. Seward stirred him. Was it "irrepressi-
ble"-this struggle between free and slave'? He was not the
man to refuse to consider. If the forces of those who believed
in slavery and its extension were becoming stronger, more
aggressive, more determined than those who believed like
him that it could be kept within certain bounds, and so kept
must ultimately die, he must prepare to meet the new situ
ation. He came out from Tremont Temple with Governor
Seward, pondering, in his way: "I reckon you are right," he
said; "we have got to deal with this slavery question, got to
give much more attention to it hereafter than we h ~ v been
doing." It was that thought that was to attend him for
many, many of the following months. It lay incubating in
his subconsciousness on his journey home. It was with him
through the weeks he spent in Illinois before his return to
Congress for the short term of the winter of 1848-49. The
time was coming when he must be active, but how be active
within the law'? What could he do now-what tangible,
lawful thing'? There was one place in the country from which
he believed that he had !1 legal right to work for the ex-
clusion of slavery, and that was the District of Columbia.
Twelve years before in the assembly of Illinois he had ex-
[287]
pressed this judgment. His months in Washington had put
emotion into his conviction, for here he had seen, every time
he went to the White . House, Treasury, War Department,
the signs of the city's slave market. It stood on the edge of
the public grounds, near the Smithsonian Institution, and to
and from it, along the avenue, gangs of negroes-often
chained-were driven daily. To have this vivid picture of
what slavery meant-a traffic in human life-always before
their eyes stirred those who hated the institution mightily.
"The 'slave pen' of the nation's capital-under the very walls
of the building that housed the Declaration of Independence,"
appeared in more than one of the speeches that Lincoln lis-
tened to in 1848. He did not thunder. He prepared to do
something.
On January 16, 1849, he brought in a carefully framed
bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. He
brought it in, and he worked for it, soliciting votes, trying
to get publicity. But the bill never ~ r n e to the floor. He
had done, however, all he could see to do, he had put himself
on record.
And now his term was over. What had it amounted t o ~
Men have called it a failure. It seems to me anything but
that. He had proved himself an able and trustworthy
national politician. He had shown, too, that, good politician
as he was, he was not so good when it came to getting things
for himself. The party had wanted to reward him, as they
called it-keep him in Washington-give him a good office.
The Land Office was suggested. He muddled it-not because
he did not want it, but because there was a friend in the way
who also wanted it. So long as he thought that possibly there
was a chance for the friend he would not apply; when he
found that there was not, he made his application-but he
had waited too long. His sorrow, however, was not that he
[288]
was too late, but that his friend felt that possibly he had been
treacherous in applying at all.
There was one positive satisfaction from the experience.
Then for the first time he learned something definite of the
Lincoln family before it went into Kentucky. A fellow Con-
gressman from the Shenandoah Valley told him of Lincolns
his district-gave him the name of one of them, a man
prominent in Rockingham County, David Lincoln. He wrote
at once. His father was born in Rockingham County, he told
David Lincoln, his grandfather had migrated from there to
Kentucky. "What of your family'?" he asked. "Do you
know anything of my grandfather'? Do you know where my
family came from when they settled in Virginia'?"
The answer was gratifying. It told him that his grand-
father was an uncle of the David to whom he had written,
that the Virginia Lincolns had come from Berks County, Penn-
sylvania. He was pleased, but he wanted more. Particularly
he wanted to know whether or not the Lincolns who came into
Berks County were Quakers.
I found recently at Lacey Springs in the Shenandoah Val-
ley, where David Lincoln's descendants still live, a tradition
that Mr. Lincoln at this time actually spent a night with his
kinsman, either in going or coming to Washington. There
is no hint of it in his letters which these descendants still
treasure. It is probably unfounded. But it is rather a pity
that he could not have looked in on the prosperous settlement
which this grandson of John Lincoln and his brothers had
built up. At the time of the correspondence, David and his
brothers had some 7,ooo acres of land, kept an inn-famous
in its day as the stopping place of all stage coaches along the
highway-ran a mill, owned many slaves-prosperous Lin
colns whom he would have been glad to know. He knew so
few of that class !
[289]
It is a pity, too, that when he was in Worcester, Massa-
chusetts, he could not have had the satisfaction of knowing that
the mayor of the city, former Governor Levi Lincoln, was a
kinsman. Governor Lincoln was of the sixth generation from
the original Samuel Lincoln-Abraham of the seventh; but,
although they met in Worcester, Lincoln dining in the stately
Lincoln home, which still stands, one of the treasures of the
town-it is a tradition that he said it was the finest dinner
at which he had ever sat-they knew nothing of their com-
mon origin.
When he spoke in Tremont Temple in Boston, the secre-
tary of the meeting was also a kinsman, Ezra Lincoln, Jr.-
a prosperous printer and a leading Whig. But they knew
nothing of their common ancestor. Nor did he know that one
of the military heroes of the day, Captain George Lincoln,
killed .at the battle of Buena Vista, was of his family, and
like himself of the seventh generation in America.
One gain of his congressional experience which he par
ticularly prized was the extension of his acquaintance. His
avidity for people had a chance. He sought them out, tapped
them, often made lifelong friends with them. Wide as he
and Alexander H. Stephens were apart, Stephens always
prized his acquaintance with Lincoln, and it was at this time
he learned to know him:
"I knew Mr. Lincoln well and intimately," he says, "and we were
both ardent supporters of General Taylor for President in 1848. Mr.
Lincoln, Toombs, Preston, myself and others formed the first Con-
gressional Taylor Club, known as 'The Young Indians,' and organized
the Taylor movement, which resulted in his nomination .. Mr.
Lincoln was careful as to his manners, awkward in his speech, but was
possessed of a very strong, clear, vigorous mind ... He always
attracted and riveted the attention of the House when he spoke. His
manner of speech, as well as thought, was original. He had no model.
He was a man of strong convictions, and what Carlyle could have
called an earnest man. He abounded in anecdote. He
[290]
everything he was talking about by anecdote, always exceedingly apt
and pointed, and socially he always kept his company in a roar of
laughter."
Out of these contacts came a fresh, searching appraisal
of himself. He was something, if not all that he wished.
He had proved he could go with the best of them-sit at
Daniel Webster's breakfasts, be listened to in Tremont Tem-
ple, walk the street with Governor Seward, sit at Governor
Lincoln's dinner table-not so bad, when he remembered
Indiana, his coming into Illinois, the flatboat, Offut' s store,
the odd jobs at rail-splitting-but still far below his thought.
Knowledge was what he lacked. Here were men that knew
things that he did not know. He was going back to the law.
He had told Herndon at the beginning of his term, when the
latter had urged reelection upon him, that he had thought
all along that the best thing for him was to return to the law
after a second term. That held now, the law was all he had
in mind. He must be a better lawyer.
[291]
XXIII
LINCOLN RETURNS TO THE LAW
T
HE Thirtieth Congress, of which Abraham Lincoln was
a member, came to its close in March of 1849. After
three or four unsatisfactory months given to office-seeking for
Illinois Whigs, himself included, he went back to the law as,
according to his own letters, he expected to do when he went
to Washington. Does this retirement from public life-this
return to his profession-spell failure'? One recent Lincoln
interpreter says that his congressional experience was not only
a faiiure but a failure closed by an "ironic picture"-his
presence at the inaugural ball of 1849! How about this
"picture" '?
Lincoln had gone to the ball with a party of friends, and
they had stayed on until three or four o'clock in the morning.
How like him! Interested in human beings and their ways-
never tired of watching them-the last man to leave any
gathering unless, indeed, he was overtaken by one of his
frequent fits of despondency. I cannot see the least reason for
describing Mr. Lincoln at this inaugural ball as this interpre
ter does, as a "worthy provincial, the last word for awkward-
ness" (the best answer to that is the daguerreotype made in
Washington in this period), "socially as strange to such a scene
as a little child, spending the whole night gazing intently
at everything he could see, at the barbaric display of wealth,
the sumptuous gowns, the brilliant uniforms, the distinguished
foreigners, and the leaders _of America, men like Webster and
Clay, with their air of assured power-the men he had failed
[292]
to impress." As a matter of fact, in his two years he had done
an extremely difficult thing for a newcomer in Congress, he
had impressed men of "assured power."
Can it be supposed that men as clever as the leaders of
the Whig party of that day would have considered sending
the man of. the above picture into Massachusetts-at that
moment the most difficult point in the Union for the Whigs'?
But Mr. Lincoln had been sent-had been sent as the chief
speaker at a pivotal point. He had been asked to speak on
the same platform with Governor Seward in Tremont Tem-
ple in Boston. The impression that he had made had been
so strong that there was a continued demand for his political
services for some time after he left the state. That is not a
political failure for a man in his first Congressional term.
And socially he had been popular-so popular that ten
years later when as a disputant in one of the greatest debates,
if not the greatest, which this country can boast, they began
to hear his name, listen to his arguments, they said: "Why,
yes
1
Lincoln, do you remember'?" And they all remembered.
No. Lincoln's term in Congress was not a failure, .even
socially.
The impression of failure is based on two things: First,
that the appointment to the General Land Office for which
he had applied went to a man whom all Illinois Whigs dis-
liked; and, second, on the long period of silence that followed
his return. Look over a collection of his letters for 1850,
1851 and 1852-you will :find almost nothing. Until Gilbert
Tracy published his little book in 1917 there had never been
a letter of Lincoln's printed in any collection for the year 1850
or for that of 1852. Tracy found four of the first date, three
of 18 51. He spoke little more than he wrote, and when he
spoke there was a strong note of sadness. This is unmistak-
able in a speech only recently come to light-one of the :find-
[293]
ings of the indefatigable Rev. William E. Barton, who pub-
lished it last year with notes. Lincoln was attending the
United States district court at Chicago in July of 1850 when
the news of President Taylor's death came. He was chosen
to- deliver the address at the memorial services. It is not
much of a speech, to be honest. One significant thing there
is in it, however: his characterization of Taylor's military
talent as a combination of negatives-"absence of excitement
and absence of fear." One can easily believe th;:tt it was upon
these traits in Taylor that Lincoln had depended in advocat
ing him. "I fear," he said at Chicago, "that the one great
question of the day" (meaning slavery, of course) "is not so
likely to be patiently acquiesced in as it would have been could
General Taylor have been spared us." That is, at that mo-
ment, 1850, he felt that the safest temper for wise handling
of the "one great question of the day" was "absence of ex
citement and absence of fear."
The close of this address drips with melancholy. Here
for the first time, so far as I know, he quotes publicly his
favorite verses beginning "0 why should the spirit of mortal
be proud '?''-seven of the fourteen stanzas-an ending which
must have left upon his audience an effect of a profoundly
depressed man.
From a careful reading of the reminiscences of this period
one carries away a similar impression of brooding melancholy.
You even get something of it in his relations with his father
and the group of relatives back in Coles County. They had
never prospered. Lincoln had g ~ i n and again given them
small sums to help them out of tight places, and to his step
brother, John D. Johnston, he was at this time giving advice
which, accepted, was equal to a fortune. Early in 1851
letters from Coles County told him of his father's serious
illness. He did not even answer the first ones-a neglect
[294]
unlike him and only to be explained by the hopelessness he
felt over the situation there.
"I have not answered them," he finally wrote, "not because I have
forgotten them, or been uninterested about them, but because it appeared
to me that I could write nothing which would do any good. You al
ready know I desire that neither father nor mother shall be in want
of any comfort, either in health or sickness, while they live ; and I feel
sure you have not failed to use my name, if necessary, to procure a
doctor, or anything else for father in his present sickness. My business
is such that I could hardly leave home now, if it was not as it is. that
my own wife is sick-a-bed. (It is a case of baby-sickness, and I suppose
is not dangerous.)"
What was back of this long, silent depression'?
So far as politics had anything to do with his state of
mind, it was not his own failure to get the General Land
Office which was troubling him. At any time he could have
had that office, so the President himself said, if he had only
spoken. The cabinet had actually postponed the appointment
three weeks for his benefit; but one of his old and dear Illinois
friends, Cyrus Edwards, was an applicant. So long as Lin-
coln thought there was any chance at all for Edwards he re-
fused to apply. When he finally saw that in no case would
the administration give the office to Edwards, he put in his
application; but it was too late. What overwhelmed him now
was that Edwards accused him of treachery, that in trying to
serve him both of them had lost the office and it had gone to
a man most unsatisfactory to the Whigs of his district.
It was these two things-his friend's feelings toward
him, and the resentment of his constituency at the appoint-
ment which had finally been made, that troubled him. "These
two things away and I should have no regrets-at least, I
think I would not."
This unpleasant mix-up and other unsatisfactory appoint-
ments in Washington brought a criticism upon President
[295]
Taylor, for whom he had been.fighting so hard, that troubled
him, too. The President was getting the reputation in Illinois
of being a man of straw, unwilling to take the responsibility
of appointments.
"This must be arrested," Lincoln wrote to the Secretary of State,
John Clayton, "or it will damn us all inevitably. It is said General
Taylor and his officers held a council of war at Palo Alto (I believe),
and that he then fought the battle against unanimous opinion of those
officers. This fact (no matter whether rightfully or wrongfully) gives
him more popularity than ten thousand submissions, however really
wise and magnanimous those submissions may be.
"The appointments need be no better than they have been, but the
public must be brought to understand that they are the President's
appointments. He must occasionally say, or seem to say, 'by the Eter-
nal,' 'I take the responsibility.' Those phrases were the 'Samson's
locks' of General Jackson, and we dare not disregard the lessons of
experience."
The whole political situation was profoundly distasteful
to Lincoln. He was one of those men that are only thoroughly
happy where there is frankness, honesty of feeling, friendly
cooperation. He was sensitive to concealed suspicions, to
unspoken hostility, to critical silences. His own mind was so
free, so candid, so without vanity of opinion, that the feeling
that he now sensed in political circles disconcerted and sad-
dened him.
But this political episode does not account for his con-
tinued sadness, I am convinced. A chief cause was another
of those blows which had so staggered him in the past. Only
a few months after his return from Washington, in February
of 1850, his second child, now about three and a half years
old, "Ed," as he always spoke of him in his letters, died.
For a man of his profound tenderness, with his passion for
childhood, such a loss was overwhelming. The death of his
mother had saddened his own childhood, the death of Ann
[296]
Rutledge had shaken the very moral foundations beneath him,
and here was his little son dead! There is no doubt that he
went through a period of terrible distress, and there is no
doubt, too, that it was at this. time that he first seriously
sought to find if, in the Christian religion, there is a support
for a man in periods of grief and distress. There is ample
evidence of this. Possibly the most important is that of a
Scotch clergyman, Dr. James Smith, the pastor of the Pres-
byterian Church in Springfield, a church of which Mr. and
Mrs. Lincoln became attendants and Mrs. Lincoln a member
soon after the death of their little son. With Dr. Smith
Lincoln held many conversations on Christian evidences. The
doctor was an able theologian, the author of a book called
the "Christian Defense,'' which unquestionably Mr. Lincoln
studied seriously, and which the doctor believed changed to
faith his doubts on the fundamentals of the Christian religion.
Mr. Lincoln's friend, Jesse Fell, always believed that it
was the putting of a certain sermon of William Ellery Chan-
ning's into Lincoln's hands at this period that wrought a
great change in his thinking and that he carne out with a pro-
found belief in the goodness of God, and certainly in the
efficacy of prayer. A. brother of Jesse Fell's, Mr. V. Fell of
Nashville, Tennessee, wrote me several years ago that he had
often heard his brother say that Mr. Lincoln told him that he
had never read anything that tallied more perfectly with his
own views than Channing's works.
It is hardly believable that Mr. Lincoln would have sent
such a message of conventional pious comfort to his father
then in his last illness as we find in a letter written early in
January of 18 51 if he was the "atheist" and "scoffer" that
Herndon and Lamon have made him out.
"I sincerely hope father may recover his health, but at all events
tell him to remember to call upon and confide in our great and good
[297]
and merciful Maker, who will not turn away from him in any ex-
tremity. He notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our
heads, and He will not forget the dying man who puts his trust in
Him. Say to him that if we could meet now it is doubtful whether
it would not be more painful than pleasant, but that if it be his lot
to go now, he will soon have a joyous meeting with many loved ones
gone before, and where the rest of us, through the help of God, hope
ere long to join them."
It seems to me quite clear that a careful examination and
weighing of the controversial literature on this subject-
William E. Barton has assembled practically everything in
his "Soul of Abraham Lincoln" -proves that while Mr. Lin-
coln could never bring himself to join any church, he be-
lieved sincerely in the essence of the Christian system;
and that the impression he made on his friends at this time
of a dissatisfied and unsettled man, was due, partially at least,
to the spiritual struggle through which he was going. It
seems to me clear, too, that it was at this period that he laid
the foundations for a profound belief in the rightness of the
judgments of God and for that deep and genuine humility
which made him willing to accept and submit himself to
those judgments, of which there is so continued and clear an
expression through the period of the war.
But, as I have had occasion to reflect more than once, in
these reports of my recent pilgrimage, you never find Lincoln's
professional activities held up by his inner sufferings. He
carried on, whatever his agony of spirit. He was carrying
on now in the law with a clearer determination than ever to
make a first-class lawyer of himself. He studied as he never
had before, and he also attempted to work out his notion of
the ethics of the profession. His well-known notes for a
lecture on the law show this. The chief point in these notes
is his Lincolnesque remark :
[298]
LINCOLN RETURNS To THE LAW
"As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being
a good man. There will still be business enough."
He laid it down as a rule that a lawyer should persuade
his neighbors to compromise whenever it was possible, point-
ing out how a nominal winner is often a real loser-"in fees,
expenses and waste of time." There could not be a worse
man, he said, than one who stirred up litigation.
One can fairly ask how far he lived up to his preachings.
Fortunately we have good evidence on the point, from mem
bers who traveled the old eighth circuit with him and who
have left such an abundant crop of recollections. He prac-
ticed his preaching to a degree that some of them regarded as
bad for business as his habit of scaling down his fees.
A rather amusing account of a settlement out of court
which does not, so far as I know, appear in any of the ex-
cellent discussions of Mr. Lincoln as a lawyer, is told in a
lecture on "Early Reminiscences of Alton," delivered in 186g
by Joseph Brown, a former mayor of both Alton and St. Louis.
Incidentally, it was delivered for the benefit of the Lovejoy
Memorial Association. It was put into my hands by Alton's
chief historian, Mr. W. T. Norton. The incident happened,
Mr. Brown says in his lecture, when he was mayor:
"A lady (by the name of Mrs. McReady) came to Alton on one
of the Keokuk packets to give Shakespearian lectures, arriving at 2
o'clock in the morning, and, as luck would have it, she stepped on an
old cellar door in front of 'Johnny Roe's' grocery and one leg went
part way through the door so that it sprained her ankle and laid her
up at the Franklin House for some time. The result was, she put
in a claim against the city for damages, but the city refused to allow
anything, and the result was, as she was permanently lamed, she sued
for $5,ooo in the United States Court at Springfield, Ill., and engaged
Mr. Lincoln as her attorney; so when the time came for the case to
be tried I went up to attend it, and on the day set I went to the United
States Court and found Mr. Lincoln and his client inside the bar
waiting for the court to open. took my seat with my attorney inside
[299]
the bar, when Mr. Lincoln came over and said: 'Mr. Brown, I don't
like to take this suit against your town; can't we compromise it in
some way'?' I said: 'I don't see how we can, as we don't think the
city is liable for an injury done to the lady by a man having bad
cellar doors.' 'Ah,' he said, 'but the city is liable for its sidewalks, and
I feel sure we shall get judgment.' 'Well,' I said, 'if you do so she
can come and help herself to the market house' (which at that time was
an old dilapidated concern). 'Well,' he said, 'I think it is best to
compromise if we can. How much will you give the lady'? She is
lamed for life with a stiff ankle.' I said: 'I can't make any offer; we
have no money.' 'Well,' he said, 'will you give her $3,000 '?' 'No,' I
said, 'there isn't that much money in the town.' Finally he got down
to $1,500, and I felt that it was best to compromise at that, so I
said: 'If we give the $1,500 are we to have the damaged limb'?' Lin-
coln said: 'I will go over and ask,' and he did, and after talking with
her a little while he came back and said: 'If you are an unmarried
. man, and as you are pretty good looking, you can have the entire
woman!' So we compromised, but I did not accept the lady's marriage
offer."
This is amusing, but not nearly so important as a letter-
so far as I know, unpublished-that is to be found in the
museum at New Salem:
"I understand," Mr. Lincoln writes to his client, "that Mr. Hickson
will go or send to Petersburg tomorrow for the purpose of meeting
you to settle the difficulty about the wheat. I sincerely hope you will
settle it. I think you can if you will, for I have found Mr. Hickson
a fair man in his dealings. If you settle I will charge nothing for
what I have done and thank you to boot. By settling you will most
likely get your money sooner and with much less trouble and expense."
He had his code of ethics, and, so far as I know, no stu-
dent-even though unfriendly-of his legal career has been
able to detect a practice in violation of that code.
He was a strong advocate of study-independent study-
self-education in the law. To what we have already had on
that point, his counsel of "work, work, work," to an inquiring
student, has been added recently a letter to a young man who
[300]
wanted to read law with him. It is a masterpiece of sensible
counsel:
"I am from home too much of my time for a young man to read
law with me advantageously. If you are resolutely determined to
make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already.
It is but a small matter whether you read with anybody or not. I
did not read with any one. Get the books, and read and study them
till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the
main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you
are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred
people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding
them, are just the same in all places. Dr. Dummer is a very clever
man and an excellent lawyer (much better than I, in law-learning),
and I have no doubt he will tell you what books to read,
and also loan you the books.
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more
important than any other one thing."
He worked, but his methods were original. Mr. Herndon
remarks somewhere that he did not prepare many legal papers,
but Mr. Charles W. Moore, who has made most careful
research in the various court houses of the circuit on which
Lincoln traveled, says that he found so many papers written
by him that he marveled that he had time for anything else.
Some of these papers that Mr. Moores turned up are most
interesting exhibits of his unconventional but altogether
effective methods of preparation for a suit.
One thing that Lincoln's term in Congress did for him
was to increase his prestige and so his law practice. There
was a wider demand for him undoubtedly because of his
Washington experience. He had a large circuit, as the map
on page 306 shows, and, as the documents in the various
court houses prove, he made all of the points. It must have
been long and tedious work. Mr. W. F. Hardy, the editor
of the Decatur Herald, said at the time of the unveiling of
the Lincoln circuit marker in his town that if the old circuit
[301]

/..e. --<.I 4
-

p-a:;o 7r:J
re"-'., ....

7- .
FACSIMILE OF BRIEF IN LINCOLN'S HAND USED IN A CASE TIUED IN 1850 IN
EDGAR. COUNTY, ILLINOIS.
From Charles W. Moore's The Career of G CouKtry

riders made ten miles an hour they did well, and "iri fall and
spring, when the roads were quagmires, progress was con-
siderably slower. Fifty miles a day was enough travel for
man and beast under the best conditions. A start from De-
catur in the morning with Springfield as a destination prob-
ably meant that no court could be held that day. Members
of the Macon County bar having legal business in Springfield,
and leaving Decatur at 8:15 A. M., are now in the capital by
10, and home again at 5 P. M. after business day.
"Slowly indeed the miles must have been covered by the
circuit riders, and wearisome enough must have been the
landscape, most of it virgin prairie, for between 1847 and
1857, when Lincoln was a circuit rider, a vast number of
sections were still unclaimed and uncultivated. Summer's
heat was quite as intense and black soil dust quite as disfigur-
ing as now. Insect pests were worse. The horses were
terrible sufferers from the flies that bred in the tall prairie
grass. Mosquitoes from the still undrained ponds that dotted
the prairie added to the discomfort.
"As compensation for these magnificent spaces so tediously
traversed, the lawyers fortunately had plenty of leisure. As
they traveled with the court there was no danger of missing
an appointment with a client or being late at a pleading.
Time was the thing that . most of the younger lawyers were
rich in.
"Undoubtedly stories must have whiled away the time
between county seats. But before that immense circuit had
been covered the stories must have grown stale and the travel-
ers must have tended to become weary and morose, as travelers
do now when they are a little tired of each other's company.
"It i5 not at all certain that men were better conversa-
tionalists in a day when there was more time to talk, or that
they became better thinkers in a period when one had to be
[303]
alone with himself. Much of the talk and thinking alike
doubtless was trivial. The present age certainly does not
read the 'Canterbury Tales' of Chaucer's pilgrims for their
moral stimulation, but rather for their humor, much of it
uncouth, judged by present-day standards.
"The Lincoln markers in the several county seats, of which
Decatur is one, memorialize not the exploits of pioneers who
effected great discoveries and faced great dangers, but the
travels of men who accepted boredom, and physical discomfort
all as a part of the day's work in a now all but forgotten
period of Illinois history."
But even at this time Lincoln's practice was not confined
to the eighth circuit. The reference to his funeral address
in honor of President Taylor in Chicago in the summer of
1850 shows he was called 'on to give that address because he
was in attendance at the circuit court. Among the new letters
which Mr. Tracy published in 19.17 is one showing that late
in December, 1849, he was in Cincinnati on law business.
That is, the demand for him was to encourage him
to carry out his determination to "work, work, work," just
as he counseled the young men that came to him.
XXIV
ON THE CIRCUIT
I
T has always been a question with me whether Abraham
Lincoln could ever have been made President of the
United States if in the traveling he did for nearly twenty
years before his nomination, week in and week out, over a
tract of country one hundred by one hundred and fifty miles
in extent, with many excursions to towns and cities outside
the block, he had not won both the respect and the love of
all sorts of people, particularly of the legal class, which, as
everywhere in the United States, was the leading political
class.
When it began to dawn upon these men in 1859 and '6o
that Lincoln had earned a chance for the Presidency, by .the
character of his fight against the extension of slavery, their
personal devotion put a fire into their efforts for him, which,
in the final analysis, was perhaps the deciding element. What
was there about the man that aroused such devotion'?
The only answer is that he was naturally an extraordi-
narily lovable human being-one of the rare special kind
that on the instant inspires affection and confidence, and that
life never spoils. Such was the feeling for him in the '5o's
that his arrival in a circuit town was an event for many an
admirer. "Lincoln's come/' was welcome news not only in
the court, but at the hotel and in many a household. Some-
thing of this welcome was certainly due to his quick falling
in with whatever was going on-grave or gay-and this in-
cluded sports of the young as well as the old. There was
[305]
nothing that boys did in which he did not gladly take a hand,
often ending up by treating a whole crowd with whom he
had run a race or helped carry out a practical joke. He was
excellent at games, playing them purely for fun and exercise,
particularly the "game of fives"-a variety of handball
popular in those days. It was excellent sport. A high dead
.MAP OF COO'H'rES
OLD 8?:!!' JOPIC/.AL. I>IS7'X'/Gr
no, i.f?N ' 'I!J47
THE EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT WHICH LINCOLN TllAVELLED INCLUDED FIFTEEN
COUNTIES. LINCOLN MARKERS HAVE BEEN OR WILL SOON BE PLACED IN THE
COURT HOUSE SQUARES OF ALL THE COUNTY SEATS.
wall was chosen, and horizontally across it two lines were
drawn--one perhaps two feet, the other twenty feet from the
ground. In front of this two ranks of five men each placed
themselves, at agreed-upon distances. A man in the front
rank threw the ball toward any point he chose between the
black lines. As the ball rebounded, it was the business of
the rear rank to knock it back against the wall. This oper-
[306]
ON THE CIRCUIT
ation was kept up until the ball fell to the ground or failed
to strike the field. This was called a hand-out, and ten hand-
outs on either side decided the game. Mr. Lincoln never
missed a game of fives if he could help it, and I have heard
men who saw him playing when he was fifty or more years
old declare that there was no better player on the circuit
than he.
His instinctive lending a hand where there was something
to be done endeared him everywhere. A perfect illustration
of this-and there are many of them-is found in the "Per
sonal Recollections of Jane Martin Johns," published by the
Decatur (Illinois) Chapter of the D. A. R. Mrs. Johns came
to the county seat of Macon County, in 1849, and
first live,] at the Macon House, which, she says, the court of
the Eighth Judicial Circuit looked upon as an oasis in their
itinerary, since there you found clean beds, good bread and a
genial landlady. Mrs. Johns, in coming into Illinois, had
evidently stipulated that certain things, rare in pioneer settle-
ments, should follow her. One of these was a piano. After
a long journey it arrived by wagon, but how were they to
get it into the Macon House'?
Now, it happened that this was court week in Decatur,
and as the discussion of what to do with the piano was going
on, the court adjourned and judge and lawyers began to join
the crowd that had gathered around the wagon. There was
a piano in the box, they were told. We want it unloaded.
Who will lend a hand'?
"A tall gentleman stepped forward," Mrs. Johns writes, "and
throwing off a big gray Scotch shawl, exclaimed, 'Come on, Swett, you
are the next biggest man.'
"That was my first meeting with Abraham Lincoln."
Mr. Lincoln took charge at once; bench and bar fell to,
and amid great hilarity the instrument was unloaded, un
[307]
packed and finally set up. That night, after supper, the whole
'bar, Judge Davis included, asked Mrs. Johns for a concert.
She gives in her captivating "Recollections" the program-
a charming echo from the past:
"For show pieces, I played the 'Battle of Prague' and the 'Carnival
of Venice,' then followed with 'Washington's March,' 'Come, Haste
to the Wedding' and W oodup Quick Step,' to convince the audience
that I 'did know a tune' or two. For tragedy I sang Henry Russel's
'Maniac,' and 'The Ship on Fire,' and then made 'their blood run
cold' with the wild wail of the 'Irish Mother's Lament.' For comic,
we sang 'The Widdy McGee' and 'I Won't Be a Nun,' topping off
with 'Old Dan Tucker,' 'Lucy Long' and 'Jim Crow,' the crowd joining
in the chorus. These were followed by more serious music. Mr.
Brown and Mr. Swett joined me in the duet 'Moonlight Music, Love
and F"lowers,' 'Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep,' 'Pilgrim Fathers,'
'Bonaparte's Grave' and 'Kathleen Mavourneen.' Each and all met
with applause.
"As a finale, I sang 'He Doeth All Things Well,' after which Mr.
Lincoln, in a very grave manner, thanked me for the evening's enter-
tainment, and said: 'Don't let us spoil that song by any other music
tonight.' Many times afterwards I sang that song for Mr. Lincoln
and for Governor Oglesby, with whom it was also a favorite."
There is another paragraph in Mrs. Johns' "Recoilec-
tions" which should be quoted in this connection. It is a
point which needs frequent emphasizing to counteract that
caricaturing of Mr. Lincoln's personal appearance which has
been going on ever since he became a candidate for the Presi-
dency-a caricaturing which a multitude of photographs,
from 1848 on, contradict:
"When I first knew Lincoln," Mrs. Johns says, "the ungainlbess
of the pioneer, if he ever had it, had worn off and his manner was
that of a gentleman of the old school, unaffected, unostentatious, who
'arose at once when a lady entered the room, and whose courtly man-
ners would put to shame the easy-going indifference to etiquette which
marks the twentieth century gentleman.'
"His dress, like his manner, was suited to the occasion, but was
evidently a subject to which he gave little thought. It was certainly
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unmarked by any notable peculiarity. It was the fashion of the day
for men to wear large shawls, and Mr. Lincoln's shawl, very large,
very soft, and very fine, is the only article of his dress that has left
the faintest impression on my memory."
There is scarcely a town which Mr. Lincoln visited, either
regularly or occasionally, on the Eighth Judicial Circuit that
has not some such distinctive reminiscence of him; one par
ticularly characteristic has within recent years come out of
Albion. Early in the 4o's, Lincoln went to the town to speak
at a joint political meeting of Whigs and Democrats. The
Democratic speaker was a former resident of Albion, a some
what flowery and sentimental individual apparently, and Lin-
coln, knowing him fairly well, anticipated that he would start
off by affecting references to the home and friends of his
youth, so dear to his heart and whom he was so glad to be
able to see again, which was exactly what he did. But Lin-
coln was ready. In the day he had borrowed a copy of
Byron's poems, and he began his reply by declaiming "grand-
iloquently," according to the historian of the episode:
"He, the unhoped but forgotten Lord,
The long self-exiled chieftain is restored ;
There be bright faces in the hall,
Bowls on the board and banners on the wall.
He comes at last in sudden loneliness,
And whence they know not, why they need not guess,
They more might marvel when the greetings o'er,
Not that he came, but came not long before."
This Albion story comes from a man who was a school
boy there at the time, and who had been so stirred by a little
talk Lincoln had given to the school children in the morning
before the meeting, that he ran away in the afternoon to hear
him again. All of the fresh reminiscences of the circuit that
come to us in these days have a similar source; that is, they are
from men who were boys when they first saw Lincoln. Often
[309]
this was in the court room, and not unfrequently at a murder
trial. The boys of Illinois seem to have had the same. kind of
curiosity about murder trials that young Abraham Lincoln
did when he lived in Indiana, and like him they would. walk
any distance, even run the risk of a thrashing, jn order to get
into court to "see how a murderer looked," as one of them
once told me. And if Mr. Lincoln was in the case, they in-
variably remembered something of his defense. I say de-
fense, for the impression seems to be, though I do not know
that it can be by documents, that he was always
the defender and never the prosecutor of a murderer. A boy
who had once heard him speak rarely forgot him, and was
very apt later to watch for a chance to edge his way into any
group where he knew Mr. Lincoln was talking or telling
stories.
In many of the towns which Lincoln frequented there
was a favorite rendezvous, like Diller's drug store in Spring-
field, chosen because the proprietor had that combination of
human qualities which particularly delighted Lincoln-
humor, shrewdness, frankness, unspoiled naturalness; and
here he was almost sure to be found in his leisure hours.
There was such a drug store in Knoxville, kept by a Dr. Dun-
can, who had been a friend of Lincoln's in New Salem times-
one of the men who had predicted that he would one day be
President !-and here Lincoln always made his way when he
was in the for court or a political speech. Among the
boys in that town was one Henry H. Miller, who, true to his
genus, ran away from school one day in the middle so's and
wormed his way into a crowded room where a murder trial
was going on. "And it was here," he wrote me a few years
ago, "that I first saw Lincoln, the tallest man in that court
room." Such was the impression that Mr. Lincoln made on
Mr. Miller that he never missed a chance after that to get a
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look at him, to listen to him. He discovered his habit of
dropping into Dr. Duncan's drug store, and was always on
hand to listen to the talk that was sure to go on when he was
there. "Here," said Mr. Miller, "I heard a story-telling
match between Lincoln and one we called 'Uncle Bill' San-
burn. It was a very even match. Dr. Duncan would not
render a decision."
One could go on almost interminably with these recollec-
tions. One of the finest groups concerns itself with his friend-
liness and helpfulness to young men, particularly to young-
sters starting in the law. He would go out of his way to help
the shy, the confused, the ignorant. I doubt if there is a
county seat on his circuit that has not made its contribution
to this Lincoln trait. Senator Joe Blackburn of Kentucky
used to tell a story, less familiar than many of the kind. He
was very young, and for the first time was appearing in the
United States Circuit Court in Chicago. The opposing counsel
was Isaac N. Arnold, one of the most distinguished men of the
Chicago bar and a friend of Mr. Lincoln. When the case
was reached Blackburn was so nervous that he became be-
wildered and made only a very feeble effort.
"I was about to sit down," his story goes, "and let the case. go by
default, as it were, when a tall, homely, loose-jointed man sitting in
the bar, whom I had noticed as giving close attention to the case, arose
and addressed the court in behalf of the position I had assumed in
my feeble argument, making the points so clear that when he closed
the court at once sustained my demurrer. I didn't know who my
volunteer friend was, but Mr. Arnold got up and attempted to rebuke
him for interfering in the matter, when I for the first time heard that he
was Abraham Lincoln, of Springfield. Mr. Lincoln, in his good-
natured reply to Mr. Arnold's strictures on his interference, said that
he claimed the privilege of giving a young lawyer a boost when strug
gling with his first case, especially if he was pitted against an experi
enced practitioner. Of course I thanked him and departed from the
court as proud as a young field marshal. I never saw Mr. ~ i n o l n
[311]
again, and he died without ever knowing who the young, struggling
lawyer was he had so kindly assisted and rescued from defeat in his
maiden effort before a. United States tribunal."
Mr. Lincoln's ingratiating personal qualities had much
more local recognition than has been popularly supposed.
Men were pleased to honor him when they had a chance.
Here is a little case in point: a town named after him as far
back as 1853, the county seat of Logan County. It came
about in this way. In 1839 he had been chairman of the state
committee on counties that had cut Sangamon County into
four parts; to one of these parts he gave the name Logan,
in honor of one of his friends in the Assembly, the father of
Gen. John Logan. As years went on, Mr. Lincoln built up
a considerable practice among the leading settlers of Logan
County. Early in the 5o's three of the most energetic of
these settlers, finding that a railroad had been routed across
their county, quietly used their inside information to get con-
trol of a considerable tract of land which they believed could
be made the future county seat. They secured title to the
tract and proceeded to incorporate the town, Mr. Lincoln
being asked to draw up the necessary documents. When it
came to a point in the negotiations where the new town had
to be named, the leader of the group in the speculation sug
gested that it be called Lincoln. "You better not do that,"
Mr. Lincoln said, "for I never knew anything named Lincoln
that amounted to much." But Lincoln it was. And Lincoln
it is to-day.
Judge Lawrence B. Stringer, in his admirable and interest-
ing history of Logan County, says that when the day came for
the sale of lots in the new town, Mr. Lincoln was present,
and going to a temporary street stand where eatables were
sold, bought two watermelons, and, one under each arm, pre-
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sented himself to the incorporators. "Now," he said, "we will
christen the new town."
One of the few pieces of property that Mr. Lincoln ever
owned was located in this town of Lincoln. He did not get
it in the original deal, as I have heard it cynically intimated,
but several years later. The owner of the lot had borrowed
money from him, giving it as security. As he never was able
to pay the debt, 1\tlr. Lincoln finally found himself with the
property on his hands. His only relation to it seems to have
been paying the taxes.
If Lincoln had been a mediocre, indolent, half-hearted
lawyer, ,his personal lovableness would never have carried
him far in the thoroughly able group of judges and lawyers
on the Illinois circuit which he traveled. They were of the
type that give confidence and loyalty only when they respect
the intellect and character of a man. There is a big bulk of
testimony from the best of them, correcting the early impres-
sion that Mr. Lincoln, after all, didn't amount to much as a
lawyer. Such studies as Frederick Trevor Hill's "Lincoln,
the Lawyer," Charles W. Moore's "Abraham Lincoln, Law-
yer," and Jesse Weik's "The Real Lincoln," all challenge
this earlier notion. Lincoln was an able if unconventional
lawyer, and as the years went on he steadily grew in his pro-
fession by conscientiously following the two rules he had laid
down for law students-rules born of experience: "Work,
work, work," and "Your own resolution to succeed is more
important than any other one thing."
There are several of his cases and not a few incidents in
connection with different cases which are rapidly becoming
fixed traditions, and it is of course desirable that these tra-
ditions should be as nearly accurate as possible, even if they
may not be very important. For example, it is sometimes
quoted against Mr. Lincoln that he took a pass on the rail-
[313]
road. It is not so many years ago that the best of us did-
if we could get one. We had not yet seen the inevitable abuse
of the practice. In Lincoln's day there never was any ques-
tion of the propriety, at least of the counsel of the road, hav-
ing a pass. There has long been a letter in circulation asking
for a renewal of a pass !
"Springfield, Feb. 13, 1858.
"R. P. Morgan, Supt. C. & R. R. R.
"Dear Sir-Says Sam to John, 'Here's you old rotten wheelbarrow.
I've broke it usin' on it." I wished you would take it and mend it case
I shall want to borrow it this afternoon.' Acting on this as a prec-
edent, here's your old 'chalked hat.' I wish you would take it and
send me a new one, case I shall want to use it the first of March.
"Yours truly,
"A. Lincoln."
Several years ago I had this letter submitted to Mr.
Morgan, then living in Dwight, Illinois, and I have before me
his answer. The letter, which he believed to have been
destroyed in the Chicago fire, was written, he says, in the
spirit of a friend enclosing an expiring annual pass for re
newal, which Mr. Lincoln was entitled to as counsel for
the company.
"I remember the letter quite distinctly, and for such use as you may
desire to make of it, give it as I believe it to have been worded and
dated:
" 'Richard P. Morgan, Jr.,
"Supt. Chicago and M. Rd.
" 'Springfield, Dec. -, 1855.
"'Dear Sir-Here's your darned old wheelbarrow broke; father
wants you to mend it so he can borrow it again this afternoon.
"'Yours truly,
" 'A. Lincoln.'
"I think I am safe in saying that the terseness of Mr. Lincoln's
style will be better recognized by his personal friends in my recollection
of the letter than in the publication you sent me.
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"I am certain of three things :
"I st. That the letter was written and that it was received by me.
"2nd. That my wording of the letter as stated is substantially
correct.
"3rd. That the date of the letter was in 1855 or 1856, most prob
ably in 1855."
In spite of this letter to me, Mr. Morgan later went back
to the original version quoted above. This was in an address
that he gave at Pontiac on February 12, 1909. With the
exception of the change in date, he quotes the form of the
letter which he wrote me in 189 5 he believed incorrect. He
does not say that in the interval he had found the original,
and I have been unable to get into communication with any
one who could explain to me why he changed his mind.
There is no one of Mr. Lincoln's law cases which seems to
me to show more clearly the kind of man he was or to illus-
trate better his lifelong habit of recognizing superiority when
he met it, and trying to pull himself up to it, than that in
which he was employed as counsel of Manny & Co., a firm of
Rockford, Illinois, manufacturers of reaping machines, which
had been sued early in the so's by Cyrus H. McCormick for
an infringement of patents. The best of counsel was em-
ployed by the Mannys. The greatest patent lawyer of his
day, P. H. Watson, of Philadelphia, had charge of the case,
and he had as assistant on the mechanical side a young law-
yer, afterwards widely known, George Harding. Edwin M.
Stanton was the leading forensic counsel.
Mr. Lincoln's coming into the case was due to the ad-
miration and confidence of a young partner in Manny & Co.,
Mr. Ralph Emerson, of Rockford, who as a law student had
been thrown into Lincoln's company. He wanted him be-
cause he believed in him. Mr. Lincoln seems to have been
pleased and proud that he was retained; but it is doubtful
[315]
if he ever had had in his professional life as humiliating an
experience. Two letters recently published in Gilbert Tracy's
collection show t ~ t although he had met Mr. Watson in
Illinois and discussed the case with him, Watson had con
sidered him so negligible a quantity that he had not taken
the trouble to send him copies of the printed documents as
he had promised, and he evidently went to the trial, held
in Cincinnati in September of 1855, without having heard
from his principal. Nevertheless he had prepared his brief
and expected to have a chance to argue the case. The story
that he was not allowed to make his argument because of Mr.
Stanton's contempt for his appearance is certainly, I think,
exaggerated, if not entirely mistaken. It was for Mr. Watson
not Mr. Stanton to decide who should make what was called
the "forensic argument"; and when it was decided that there
was to be but one speech of that nature, he properly enough
chose Mr. Stanton in preference to Mr. Lincoln. The cir
cumstances of this decision were such that Lincoln felt he
had not been fairly treated. Moreover, there is no question
that he was socially snubbed_ from first to last by his fellow
counsel. Many years ago I discussed the case fully with Mr.
Harding, the only one on either side then living, and pub-
lished an account written by him. But there was a side light
in his talk not in the published story. It is something of a
confession:
"Twice in my life," he told me, "I have turned my back on men
because of their appearance, and both of these men later became
Presidents of the United States. The first was in Cincinnati in 1855,
when I deliberately turned my back on Abraham Lincoln because
he looked queer and provincial and held his umbrella in a way of
which I did not approve. The second was at a little town in western
New York State, where the hotel accommodations were crowded and
I was asked to share my room with a strange lawyer, and refused be
cause he was dusty and hot from travel. His name, I learned, was
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Grover Cleveland. I think I have finally learned that you cannot
always judge a man by his haberdashery and tailoring."
The big thing about Lincoln in this trial was that, dis
appointed bitterly as he was, neglected and possibly in-
sulted as he felt himself, when the trial was thoroughly
launched, and he realized that it was a contest between men
of the highest technical knowledge, as well as the finest legal
training and experience, he became utter! y absorbed in the
exhibit. His intellectual delight in the quality of the thing
wiped out all personal feeling. It became a great profes
sional experience. Emerson reports him as saying, as they
walked the street after the close of the case, "Emerson, I am
going home to study law. These big fellows are coming West
soon, and I am going to be ready for them." He was ready
a few years later to meet the biggest of them all, and to have
him acknowledge him as his rightful master, though it was
not exactly in the field he had expected that he met Edwin
M. Stanton.
Without a doubt the law case which to-day has the strong
est hold on most Lincoln readers and pilgrims is that in
which Mr. Lincoln defended Duff Armstrong, the son of his
old Salem friends, Jack and Hannah Armstrong, from the
charge of killing a companion in a drunken brawl. In the
first place, it has the fascination of being a murder case, some-
thing in which youth and natural human beings never lose
interest; then the very incongruity of the setting-a camp
meeting-catches the imagination. And yet, how typical it
was ! Orthodox Christians of Illinois had not learned in those
days as later to protect their respectability from the contact
of the wicked. The wicked formed a disreputable fringe
around every camp meeting-drinking and quarreling and
carousing. It was in such a fringe that the crime with which
Duff Armstrong was charged was committed.
[317]
The case had the further appeal of sentiment. Here was
one of Illinois' greatest lawyers and its second greatest man,
who soon was to contest the Senatorship with her first greatest
man, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, dropping important legal
and political duties to rome, at his own expense, to defend
the wayward son of two simple, unimportant people who had
been his friends when he was poor and unknown. It was a
great man fighting to save a mother's tears.
This was enough to make it unforgettable. And on top
of this came the charge that Mr. Lincoln saved Duff Arm-
strong from hanging by a trick. For years the case has been
tossed back and forth between those who believe this true and
those who deny it. There have been those who justified the
trick, since it was successful; there have been those who, be-
lieving or half believing, have justified the trick because it
saved a man's life; and there have been those, friendly and
unfriendly to Mr. Lincoln, who decried it because it was a
trick and proved him not always the honest man he was called.
The alleged deception came at a point in the trial when
the charge against Duff Armstrong depended upon the truth-
fulness of the prosecution's chief witness, who had sworn he
saw Duff strike the fatal blow.
"It was night, how could you s e e ~
And his answer had been that it was as light as day, the
moon being full and about where the sun is at ten o'clock in
the morning.
Mr. Lincoln, cross-examining the witness with gentleness,
brought out repeatedly this point of the hour and the full
light, until it was impressed upon the jury as the real crux
of the case. And then at the proper moment he introduced
an almanac-an almanac that showed that the moon at the
hour of the murder, close to eleven o'clock, was in a position
where, so he declared, it would not have given a light by
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ON THE CIRCUIT
which the witness could have seen the blow struck. The evi
dence of the almanac upset the testimony and in the end Duff
was discharged.
Then came the accusation that to prove his point, Mr.
Lincoln, discovering that the almanac of 1857 did not give
him what he wanted, had caused the almanac of 1853, which
did, to be falsified, the 3 changed to a 7 throughout. So far
as I know the treated almanac was never put in evidence until
thirty years after the trial. In 1888 an individual who
claimed to have been at the trial said that he had discovered
the very book, showing, under the glass, the obvious change
of the figure. The story went the rounds, and the almanac
finally found its way into the famous Lincoln collection of
Gunther, the Chicago candy man. The August calendar of
the falsified almanac sustained Lincoln. According to it, it is
obvious that there was no moonshine at the time that the
murder was committed that would enable any witness to
see a blow.
But how about the true almanac of 1857 '? Would that
be sufficient for Mr. Lincoln's purpose'? Would it discredit
the witness' contention that the moon was about where the
sun was at ten o'clock in the morning'? The almanac he used
was the popular "Christian Family Almanac for 1857,'' a
copy of which is on file in the New York Public Library.
This shows that on August 29, 18s7, the date of the murder,
the moon was two days past the first quarter and set at three
minutes . before midnight, 11 :57. That is, the moon at the
hour of the . murder was about an hour above the horizon,
which is a good ways from where the summer sun is at ten
o'clock a. m.
Then the question becomes, How much light would the
moon, an hour above the horizon, give in the particular grove
where Duff was said to have killed his comrade'? One can
[319]
hardly believe that it would have been enough to have seen
distinctly the fatal act. I have always had a desire to settle
this question by visiting the grove where the murder took
place, if it still exists; or, if not, one near-by, aqout eleven
o'clock on a night when the moon is to set at three minutes
before midnight or thereabouts; but I have never had the op-
portunity, and I leave it to the Boy Scouts who, for a number
of years now, have been making pilgrimages to the Armstrong
home to carry out this particular piece of investigation. I
am inclined to think that in a grove at that hour, and in that
locality, and under these moon conditions, they could see but
little. The point of which is that it was not necessary for
Mr. Lincoln to forge an almanac in order to free his old
frie.ds' son, even if he had bee:q. a man given to trickery. It
was not "like him" to do it. Moreover, he was certainly
clever enough to understand that such a trick would be sooner
or later detected and bring upon him the charge, which he of
all others disliked, that he had done an unfair thing.
One could go on, far beyond the limits of this book, with
these stories of Lincoln's relations to his fellows-of his wit,
his ability, his unadulterated human nature-the kind of thing
which stamped him as different from the ordinary man-
more naturally kind, more naturally shrewd, less pretentious,
. less technical. It was the demonstration of the kind of person
he was going on year in and year out, as he traveled the cir-
cuit, that finally made him the most generally loved ' and
trusted man in Illinois. There is no question that the place
that he held in the esteem and affection of men of superior
as well as of humble parts was a powerful factor in finally
carrying him into the Presidency. Still, that could never
have happened if it had not been for what he did on the great
question of the day from 1854 on.
[320]
XXV
LINCOLN BOLTS HIS PARTY
T
HE years of deep depression following Abraham Lin
coin's first term in Congress were not only years of hard
work at his profession. They were likewise years of pro-
found reflection on the question of slavery extension. As
a member of the Thirtieth Congress he had heard the tre-
mendous discussion between those who insisted all new terri
tory acquired by the country must be free, and those who in-
sisted that since the South had shared in the cost of acquire-
ment it was just she should have at least her half for slaves.
The debate had gone on, finally heading in the compromises
of 1850.
These compromises were not what Lincoln had hoped for
-what forty times at least he claimed he had voted must be.
To be sure, California was free, but it was left to the future
citizens of New Mexico and Utah to decide whether or no
they preferred freedom to slavery. He did not like the
ferocious Fugitive Slave Bill. Returning runaway slaves
he called "a dirty, disagreeable job," that as a rule "slave
holders would not perform for one another," but it was a law
for which the South had paid with the abolition of the slave
trade in the District of Columbia, and it must be obeyed.
It was not the compromises that made him sober, it was
their failure to settle the matter. They were supposed to
be "final." Why should they not be'? Every inch of terri-
tory the United States owned was now under an agreement
[321]
as solemn as men could make. Why should there not be
peace'?
The chief immediate reason was that the North would not
obey the Fugitive Slave Law-rejoiced in evading it. Nor
would it keep silent about it. Among the papers for which
Lincoln & Herndon subscribed was The National Era. Not
long after both Whigs and Democrats had voted the com-
promises of 1850 a "finality" a woman began a serial in its
pages-"Uncle Tom's Cabin"-a story of the workings of
the hated law. With every instalment the wrath of the North
rose higher and hotter-and with the agitation rose the wrath
of the South.
Lincoln .saw with growing alarm that out of the very
measures intended to settle forever the conflict two dangerous
classes were forming and expanding-in the South a group
who, for the sake of perpetuating slavery, were beginning to
assail and ridicule what he called "the white man's charter
of freedom, the declaration that all men are created free and
equal"; and in the North a group who, "rather than that
slavery should continue a single hour, would shatter into
fragments the union of these States, tear to tatters its now
venerated Constit:ution, and even burn the last copy of the
Bible."
Dangerous business, but so long as the settlements held,
he for one held to his life-long belief that slavery confined
must ultimately die.
And then there happened the one thing which could have
made him change his mind as to the only practical and peace
ful way of putting an end to it. In May, 1854, the Missouri
Compromise, which he had always regarded as the most sacred
of them all, forbidding slavery in any territory north of 36
deg. 30 min., was repealed; and the doctrine of "Squatter
Sovereignty" installed. It was pulling his house down about
[322]
his ears- shattering the one possible way, as he saw it, for the
extinction of slavery.
What was the base of his belief that slavery quarantined
must become extinct'? Lincoln was counting on the nature of
the human heart to bring about the end of slavery. He was
convinced that the mass of mankind considered it a great
moral wrong, that this feeling was "not evanescent but
eternal." The men of the South in the past had shared this
view. Had they not joined the North in ending the slave
trade'? Had they not agreed to the ordinance of 1 787 '? Was
it not a slave holder, Henry Clay, who had framed the Mis-
souri Compromise'? Had they not already actually freed
nearly a half million of their negroes'? Was it not true that
Southerners were constantly coming North and becoming
"tip-top" Abolitionists'? Why, Illinois herself had been
"brought in free" by the work of a former slave owner, Gov-
ernor Coles! Keep slavery shut in and ultimately the human
sympathies of the South, her sense of the wrong of slavery,
would conquer.
But the crux of his faith was quarantine. And- the
quarantine was lifted. It must be restored; and he stiffened
for the fight.
I find not a few people who believe that Lincoln's knowl-
edge and feeling about slavery dates from the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise, that up to this time he had given no
thought to the subject, had no strong convictions upon it.
Let such people study the speech with which he began his war
on the Nebraska Bill, as the repeal now popularly came to be
called. The author and backer of that bill, Senator Stephen
A. Douglas, had come on to Illinois soon after it had been
signed by the President to make peace with an outraged con-
stituency. Lincoln was selected by general consent as the
most fit to meet him. Their first encounter came early in
(.323]
October, 1854, at the State Fair in Springfield, and a few
days later at Peoria they repeated their debate. For vigor,
compactness, logic, solid information one would have to go
far to find the equal of this first speech of Lincoln's against
the extension of slavery. It is packed with ideas, saturated
with familiarity with the history and development of the
thing. It is the kind of expression that comes only from long
living with a subject. It demonstrates beyond question, it
seems to me, that Lincoln from his boyhood had been, both
consciously and unconsciously, observing and turning over the
exhibits of what he regarded as a tremendous national wrong.
This speech of October, 1854, has in it, too, the seeds of
all the arguments which he was afterwards to develop in the
fight of which this was the first round. Here you have the
first expression of that idea which afterwards was to play
so large a part in his argument, that the repeal meant nothing
else than the spread of slavery "over every part of the wide
world where men could be found inclined to take it." Here,
too, you find that he had no illusions about the terrible possi-
bilities of standing out against the repeal. It meant "blows
and bloodshed." "Could there be a more apt invention,"
he cried, "to bring about collision and violence on the slavery
question than this Nebraska project is'? If they had literally
formed a ring and placed champions within to fight out the
controversy, the fight could not be more likely to come off than
it is." He saw more. Not only "blows and bloodshed," but
that the first drop of blood shed might be the real death knell
of the Union !
Nothing shows better how profound was his feeling on
the subject than the way in which he immediately thrust aside
all thought of party, except as it might serve the question.
He was something more than a Whig now. The time had
come when he would go with anybody that went right-with
[324]
Owen Lovejoy, the Abolitionist; w i ~ Lyman Trumbull, the
Democrat; with his highly conservative Whig friend, 0. W.
Browning.
And what a great politician he was at the moment! How
quickly he. turned every effort to pulling all these scattered
forces together! Rebuke them, was his cry. Show them they
cannot do this kind of thing, that we will fight. We will get
int? office wherever we can the man that is against this thing,
no matter what his party. He gave the most convincing evi-
. dence of his sincerity in this counsel when, in November, in
the contest for the United States Senatorship-he had ert-
tered with a large following-rather than let the office go to
a candidate whose anti-Nebraska sentiment he mistrusted
(and who also had been intriguing in an underhanded way
against him) he threw his own following to Lyman Trum-
bull, a Democrat, but an out-and-out anti-Nebraska Democrat.
I have always liked the way Lincoln reported this fight
in the Legislature for the Senatorship in the fall of 1854 to
his friend Washburne. "I could have headed off every com-
bination and been elected had it not been for Matteson's"
{his Whig rival) "double game, and his defeat now gives me
more pleasure than my own gives me pain."
Here for the first time in several years we have something
like the old buoyant political Lincoln. The Nebraska men
were more disturbed by Trumbull's election than they would
have been by his. ". . . hated it worse than anything that
could have happened," he wrote Washburne. "It is a great
consolation to see them worse whipped than I am." Here is
a man who can keep his sense of humor in a tremendous moral
fight!
He was in no way disturbed by the flocking of extremists
to the anti-Nebraska crowd. When his anxious Whig friends
said: "They are going to call us Abolitionists," he told them
[325]
they were silly, that the only thing at stake now was not what
you were called but whether you were fighting the repeal.
Douglas gibed him unmercifully for his willingness to attack
wherever he saw a chance to gain an inch. He was not dis-
turbed. "Remember," he replied, "you took us by surprise.
We were thunderstruck, stunned, reeled and fell in utter con-
fusion, but we rose, each fighter grasping whatever he could
first reach-a scythe, a pitchfork, chopping ax or butcher's
cleaver. We struck in the direction of the sound, and we
are rapidly closing in on you. You must not think to divert
us from our purpose by showing us that our apparel, our dress,
our weapons are not entirely perfect and uniform."
Of course he was headed direct for a new party, that
party which was slowly forming itself out of the bolting
fragments of every other party and which was collecting to
itself every variety of extremist and theorist scattered about
the land. Twenty-five years ago I had the satisfaction of
knowing in Illinois a number of the men who in the middle
so's had been leaders in gathering up these fragments.
Among them was Paul Selby, in 1854 the editor of a paper
in Jacksonville. Mr. Selby was a careful, scholarly, con-
servative person in 1896, but in 1854 you could not move
fast enough for him. He was one of a few young men e g e ~
to bring together all of the righteous indignation which had
been showing itself in spontaneous mass meetings in Illinois.
It seemed to this group that a mass meeting at the State
Fair of 1854 might crystallize the excitement. So it was
called, but it had anything but a friendly reception at the
capital. They would not allow them to hold a meeting in
the State House as they had expected to do, and there was not
a printing office in the town, Mr. Selby told me, that would
set up their handbills, so he was obliged to print them himself
in a job shop. It was during the session of this band of radi
[326]
cals that Lincoln first replied to Douglas. They took a recess
to hear him. When they came back they appointed a state
central committee and put Lincoln on it, as a representative
of Sangamon. He refused to serve. He still had hopes of
the Whigs, Mr. Selby told me, with a pitying little s r n i l ~
And he did. But as the months went on the hopelessness of
getting a fighting body from either of the old parties was
more and more clearly demonstrated. The little anti-
Nebraska nucleus that had been formed at Springfield and
that Lincoln had refused to commit himself to grew. And
how it was fed!
All through these months there were trailing across
Illinois and down the Ohio groups of Eastern Abolitionists
and Free Soilers, men, women and children, crusaders, de-
termined that Squatter Sovereignty, cost what it might in
hardship, should result in ,the freedom of Kansas. And
Kansas' neighbor, Missouri, regarding these colonists as a
direct attack on its prosperity and principles, had set up a
retaliatory movement. The "blows and bloodshed" that Mr.
Lincoln had prophesied at the State Fair in 1854 were
beginning. The fighting blood of Illinois rose with the suf-
fering in Kansas.
Early in 1856 Paul Selby called a second convention,
this time of anti-Nebraska editors. They met in Decatur, and
Lincoln found it convenient to be in town. He took no part
in the day's public meetings, but when his help on the resolu
tions to be adopted was asked he gave it. He accepted an
invitation for the banquet which was to be held in the evening,
and spoke, thus openly going over to the bolters. He felt,
he said, a sort of an interloper, and was reminded of an
incident of a man not possessed of features the ladies would
call handsome, who while riding through the woods met an
equestrienne. (Mr. Lincoln hardly used that word. It cer-
[327]
tainly was put in his mouth by the editor who later told the
story, Mr. B. F. Shaw of the Dixon Telegraph!) He reined
his horse to one side of the bridle path and stopped, waiting
for her to pass. She also checked her horse to a stop, and
after looking him over in a curious sort of way finally broke
out with:
"Well, for the land's sake, you are the homeliest man I
ever saw."
"Yes, ma'am, but I cannot help that."
"No, I suppose not, but you might stay at home."
Mr. Lincoln suggested to the editors that he might have
stayed at home on this occasion.
A state convention of anti-Nebraska forces was called for
May 29, 1856, at Bloomington, and Lincoln this time
accepted his appointment as a delegate from Sangamon. He
was on hand for the meeting. That it was a great convention
there is no doubt. One of the reports of a Chicago corre
spondent began with this paragraph:
"May 29, 9 a. m. The train arrived here an hour ago. The
porches, halls and doorways of the Pike House are crowded with a
dense mass of delegates. Men are here from all parts of the State.
Egypt is in counsel with us. It is a spontaneous outpouring of the
people."
All that followed at the Bloomington convention of 1856
justifies this correspondent's enthusiastic first paragraph.
They organized. Men spoke. The thing went as well as a
thing of that sort possibly could. It was left to Lincoln to
make the speech which really crystallized the elements of the
new party beyond any possibility of crumbling. The "lost
speech" they have always called what he said that day-lost
because under the emotion and sweep of it no reporter kept
his head sufficient! y to take a note.
[328]
Back in the go's, when working on a Life of Lincoln in
Illinois, one of my most tantalizing experiences was meeting
men who had been present at this convention and who pro-
ceeded to give me glowing versions of this miraculous
legendary speech. There was Thomas J. Henderson of
Princeton, Joseph Medill and George Schneider of Chicago,
J. B. Cunningham of Urbana, Judge Scott of BloomingtQn.
The spell was still on them, but as for telling me what Lincoln
said, there was not a man that could give me any idea. I
have before me the yellowed notes made in Bloomington after
a talk with Judge Scott. "Unless one heard that speech he
cannot know what eloquence is," he had told me-and this
from a man of controlled expression.
It was a challenge to one gathering up fragments to
recreate an episode, and I went from place to place and man
to man, trying from talk and newspaper files to collect enough
little pieces to form at least the outline of a speech. It was
while at this work I learned that Henry C. Whitney, a young
lawyer who had been with Mr. Lincoln at Danville in the
days before the convention, who had gone to Bloomington
with him and who had heard the speech, was said to have
made and preserved notes. Mr. Whitney was still living, a
half invalid, at Beachmont, Massachusetts. And there I made
my way, and found it to be a fact that he alone, of all that
body gathered in the hall at Bloomington, had sufficiently
kept his head to set down something of what Mr. Lincoln
had said.
When I urged Mr. Whitney, in the name of McClure's
Magazine, to write out his notes, he was reluctant. They
were too imperfect, he said, and he showed me the yellowed
sheets with their faded bits of writing-imperfect indeed, but
still voluminous. I think he had long wanted to try to make
something out of these savings but feared the result. When
[329]
he finally yielded to my urging, he did his work with the
utmost care, though with many misgivings. He knew well'
enough that whatever he produced would be severely criti-
cized, and he went over and over his notes, carefully com-
paring them all with printed sources. When his work was
finished he made no other claim for it than that it was the
best he could do, after so long a time, with the material that
he had.
The result seemed to the editors of McClure's Magazine
worth publishing, but before this was done it was submitted
to a number of the men with whom I had talked in Illinois.
What did they think of it'? Was it a fair report'? The
reaction was varied. Mr. Henderson thought little of it.
"It has been so universally regarded as a masterly speech and
the effect of it upon the convention was so he
wrote, "that I fear no report of it can be given to the public
that would do justice to Mr. Lincoln or give a proper con-
ception of the speech and of its remarkable power and
eloquence."
There were others that felt like Mr. Henderson. McLean
County, Illinois, held a commemoration of the Bloomington
speech in 1900, and the gist of opinion there. was so much
against Mr. Whitney's version that when the County His-
torical Society published its report of the exercises it took
pains to speak of Mr. Whitney's "alleged notes," and to add:
"In this community, where many are now living who heard
the great speech and where Mr. Lincoln was so well known
and loved, all of his friends consider the speech still 'lost.' "
That may be true, but there were at least two persons,
friends of Mr. Lincoln, and of importance in the movement,
at the Bloomington convention, that felt differently in 18g6.
Among those to whom the submitted the manu-
script of Mr. Whitney's report before publishing it was
[330]
Mr. J. B. Cunningham of Urbana, whose honesty and fitness
to judge of the speech I take it, no one, even in the McLean
County Historical Society, would question. "After forty
years," Mr. Cunningham writes, "I recognize very much in
the utterances, manner and spirit of the speech, especially
in the moderation which he counselled."
Mr. Whitney's report made the strongest impression on
Mr. Joseph Medill, the editor of the Chicago Tribune. It
stirred him to a spirited informal account of the convention
and of Mr. Lincoln's part in it. It proves that at least one
astute and qualified observer did not sniff at the Whitney re-
port or question his good faith. Mr. Medill's letter also gives
probably the best picture of the convention we have from an
actual delegate.
"You invited my attention recently to H. C. Whitney's
report of the great radical 'anti-Nebraska' speech of Mr.
Linc'oln, delivered in Bloomington May 29, 1856, before the
first Republican State Convention of Illinois; and as I was
present as a delegate and heard it you ask me to state how
according to my best recollection, is it reproduced
in his report.
"I have carefully and reflectively read it, and taking into
account that Mr. Whitney did not take down the speech
stenographically, but only took notes and afterwards wrote
them out in full, he has reproduced with remarkable accuracy
what Mr. Lincoln said, largely in his identical language and
partly in synonymous terms. The report is close enough in
thought and word to recall the wonderful speech delivered
forty years ago with vivid freshness. No one was expect\ng
a great speech at the time. We all knew that he could say
something worthy of the occasion, but nobody anticipated
such a Demosthenean outburst of oratory. There was great
political excitement at the time in Illinois and all over the old
[331]
IN TH-E FOOTSTEPS OF THE LINCOLNS
North West growing out of the efforts of the South to intro-
duce slavery into Kansas and Nebraska. The free soil men
were highly wrought up in opposition, and Mr. Lincoln par
took of their feelings.
"I am unable to point out those sentences and parts of the
reported speech which vary most in phraseology from the
precise language he used, because there is an approximation
of his words in every part of it. The ideas uttered are all
there. The sequence of argument is accurately given. The
invectives hurled at pro-slavery aggression are not exaggerated
in the report of the speech. Some portions of the argument
citing pro-slavery aggressions seem rather more elaborate than
he delivered; but he was speaking under a high degree of
excitement and the convention was in a responsive mood, and
it is impossible to be certain about it. The least that can be
said is that the Whitney report not being shorthand is yet
a remarkably good one and is the only one in existence that
reproduces the speech.
"During all the preceding year the public mind of the
West had been lashed into a high state of commotion over the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise the year before, which had
excluded the introduction of slavery into all territory north
of 36.30 degrees. Taking advantage of the repeal the slave-
holders of Missouri and other slave states, aided by the Ad-
ministration of Franklin Pierce, were striving to convert
Kansas and Nebraska into slave states. This bad work was
carried on actively in the spring of 1856. Many houses of
the free state men of the new City of Lawrence, including
their hotel, were burned. Printing offices were destroyed;
store goods were carried off; horses and cattle were stolen;
sharp fights were taking place; men were being killed, and
civil war was raging in 'bleeding Kansas.' In Washington,
Brooks of South Carolina entered the Senate chamber and
[332]
nearly clubbed to death Senator Sumner of Massachusetts."
(Mr. Medill might have added here that Paul Selby, who
had been working in Illinois for two years to secure this
convention, had, a few days before, been so badly beaten by
his political opponents in Jacksonville that he was at home
in bed instead of on the floor of Major's Hall in Blooming-
ton.) "Judge Trumbull offered a resolution in the Senate
to prevent civil war in Kansas.
"While this state of things was going on the first State
Republican Convention ever held in Illinois, assembled in
Bloomington, May 29, 1856. It was composed of Abolition-
ists, Free Soil Whigs and 'Anti-Nebraska' Democrats. Owen
Lovejoy embodied the first named, Abraham Lincoln and
John M. Palmer the second and third elements. The whole
united made the new Republican party which has dominated
the State ever since, though Palmer, now Senator, returned
to the Democratic party, taking Trumbull with him, several
years ago.
"At this Bloomington Republican convention delegates
were appointed who voted to nominate Fremont for President.
Abraham Lincoln was placed at the head of the State electoral
ticket, and Colonel Bissell (of the Mexican War) was nom-
inated for Governor, and free soil resolutions were passed.
Mr. John M. Palmer presided and made a stirring free soil
speech. Mr. Lincoln, who was a delegate, counselled every
step that was taken in his quiet, persuasive way. A sharp
dispute broke out in the platform committee between the
radicals, led by the Abolitionist Owen Lovejoy (afterwards
M. C.), and 0. H. Browning (afterwards Senator and Secre-
tary of Interior) leading the conservatives. Lincoln acted
as a peacemaker and counsellor. He advised the committee
to indorse 'the Declaration of Independence and the rights of
man, and to declare that in accordance with the opinions and
[333]
practices of the great statesmen of all parties for the past
sixty years, Congress possessed full constitutional power to
prohibit slavery in all territories and that such power should
be exerted to prevent such extension,' which was done. Mr.
Browning (Conservative) was allowed to add some high-.
sounding platitudes to the platform. He made the opening
speech in the convention and delivered it in a courtly manner
and orotund voice, advising great moderation, and invoking
the convention 'to ever remember that slavery itself was
one of the compromises of the Constitution and was sacredly
protected by the Supreme Law.' He was followed by the
radical, Owen Lovejoy, in a terrific declamation against
slavery and all its works.
"Mr. Emery, a 'Free State' man, just from 'bleeding
Kansas,' told of the 'border ruffian' raids from Missouri upon
the Free State settlers in Kansas; the burnings, robberies and
murders they were then committing, and asked for help to
repeal them.
"When he finished Lincoln was vociferously called for
from all parts of Major's large hall. He came forward and
took the platform beside the presiding officer. At first his
voice was shrill and hesitating. There was a curious intro-
spective look in his eyes, which lasted for a few moments.
Then his voice began to move steadily and smoothly forward.
And the modulations were under perfect control from thence-
forward to the finish. He warmed up as he went on and
spoke more rapidly; he looked a foot taller as he straightened
himself to his full height and his eyes flashed fire; his coun-
tenance became wrapped in intense emotion; he rushed along
like a thunderstorm. He prophesied war as the outcome of
these aggressions and poured forth hot denunciations upon
the slave power. The convention was kept in an uproar
applauding and cheering and stamping; and this reacted on
[334]
the speaker and gave him a tongue of fire. The thrilling
scene in that old Bloomington hall forty years ago arises in
my mind as vividly as the day after its enactment.
"There stood Lincoln in the forefront, erect, tall and
majestic in appearance, hurling thunderbolts at the foes of
freedom, while the great convention roared its indorsement!
I never witnessed such a scene before or since. As he described
the aims and aggressions of the unappeasable slaveholders
and the servility of their Northern allies as illustrated by
the perfidious repeal of the Missouri Compromise two years
previously, and their grasping after the rich prairies of Kansas
and Nebraska to blight them with slavery and to deprive free
labor of this rich inheritance, and exhorted the friends of
freedom to resist them to the death-the convention went
fairly wild. It paralleled or exceeded the scene in the revolu-
tionary Virginia convention of eighty-one years before when
Patrick Henry invoked death if liberty could not be pre-
served, and saying: 'After all we must fight.' Strange, too,
that this same man received death a few years afterwards
while conferring freedom on the slave race and preserving
the American Union from dismemberment.
"While Mr. Lincoln did not write out even a memoran-
dum of his Bloomington speech beforehand neither was it
extemporary. He intended days before to make it, and coined
it over in his mind in outline and gathered his facts and
arranged his arguments in regular order and trusted to the
inspiration of the occasion to furnish him the diction with
which to clothe the skeleton of his great oration. It is difficult
to name any speech by another orator delivered on the same
subject about that time or subsequently that equaled it-
not excepting those made by Sumner, Seward or Chase in
strength of argument or dramatic power.
"It was my journalistic duty, though a delegate to the
[335]
convention, to make a 'long-hand' report of the speeches
delivered for The Chicago Tribune. I did make a few para
graphs of report of what Lincoln said in the first 8 or 10
minutes, but I became so absorbed in his magnetic oratory
that I forgot myself and ceased to take notes; and joined with
the convention in cheering and stamping and clapping to the
end of his speech.
"I well remember that after Lincoln had sat down and
calm had succeeded the tempest, I waked out of a sort of
hypnotic trance, and then thought of my report for The
Tribune. There was nothing written but an abbreviated
introduction.
"It was some sort of satisfaction to find that I had not
been 'scooped,' as all the newspaper men present had been
equally carried away by the excitement caused by the wonder-
ful oration and had made no report or sketch of the speech.
"It was fortunate, however, that a cool-nerved young
lawyer and ardent friend of Lincoln's who was present, with
nimble fingers took down so much of the exact words as
they fell from the great orator's lips that he was afterwards
able to reproduce the speech almost identically as it was
uttered, and has thus saved it to posterity.
"Mr. Lincoln was strongly urged by party friends to
write out his speech to be used as a campaign document for
the Fremont Presidential contest of that year; but he declared
that 'it would be impossible for him to recall the language he
used on that occasion, as he had spoken under some excite
ment.'
"My belief is, that after Mr. Lincoln cooled down he
was rather pleased that his speech had not been reported,
as it was too radical in expression on the slavery question
for the digestion of Central and Southern Illinois at that time,
and that he preferred to let it stand as a remembrance in the
[336]
minds of his audience. But be that as it may, the effect of
it was such on his hearers that he bounded to the leadership
of the new Republican party of Illinois, and no man after
wards ever thought of disputing that position with him. On
that occasion he planted the seed which germinated into
a Presidential candidacy and that gave him the nomination
over Seward at the Chicago convention of 186o, which placed
him in the Presidential chair, there to complete his predestined
work of destroying slavery and making freedom universal, but
yielding his life as a sacrifice for the glorious deeds."
Mr. Medill is quite right in saying that the speech was
too radical for the digestion of many parts of Illinois.
Lincoln and Billy Herndon-and nobody rejoiced as Hern
don did in what Lincoln had done-went back to Springfield,
and, under the enthusiasm of the Bloomington success, called
a ratification meeting at the court house. Three persons
attended-Lincoln, Herndon and one whom Herndon de-
scribes in telling the story as "a courageous man named John
Pain." Lincoln spoke. The meeting was larger, he said,
than he "knew it would be" ! He knew he and his partner
would attend, he .was not sure any one else would, and yet
another man had been . brave enough to come out. "While
all seems dead," he exhorted Billy Herndon and John Pain,
"the age itself is not dead. Be hopeful, and now let us
adjourn and appeal to the people."
It was not only in Springfield so cold a shoulder was
turned to him that he had need of all the faith within him
to carry him through. He went to Shelbyville, a town
between Springfield and Vandalia, to debate with his friend,
Anthony Thornton. The county and the town were almost
solidly against him. "I take some comfort," he told his
audience, "from the fact that there are but sixteen Repub
licans in Shelby County, and therefore, however poorly I
[337]
may' defend my cause, I can hardly harm it if I do it no
good." But what he did by that one speech-the only
Republican speech made in the county during the campaign
of 1856--was to increase the sixteen Republicans to some-
thing over one hundred and fifty.
He went to Petersburg in October. Mr. Henry Rankin
tells in his "Recollections" of the anger there. As Lincoln
mounted the platform to present Fremont hurrahs for
Buchanan filled the air. For a time it looked as if the meet-
ing would be broken up. "No d-d Abolition speeches could
be made in Menard County this campaign," the crowd
declared. For a half hour cat-calls, whistles, tin horns filled
the air, and through it all Lincoln stood with folded arms,
surveying the scene. When the tumult grew less he began
to talk. Little by little his hearers grew silent. In less than
half an hour after he got his first hearing he was master, and
for more than two hours he held the mastery. He enjoyed
both the struggle and the conquest. "I never felt so full of
just what a crowd ought to hear," Mr. Rankin heard him
tell Herndon, "and never was a crowd more competent, from
the common sense standpoint, than the Menard County one
was to hear a fair and candid statement of facts,. if I could
just get them still for half an hour as an entering wedge.
This I did, and I gave them my best. After I was well under
way it was the most enjoyable of all the speeches I made
through the entire campaign. The returns show I did a poor
day's business down there for the State Committee so far as
votes count. But I dropped some things among voters that
day in Menard that will stay until the next election. I
soaked that crowd full of political facts they can't get away
from."
And so it went. I have heard a story of a Fremont
procession in this campaign in which Mr. Lincoln and one
[338]
fiery Abolitionist and his son were the only marchers. But
two years later, in that same town, a thousand people marched
behind him. It was they that had changed, not he.
Lincoln had no illusions about the nature of the conflict
to which he had committed himself. It would be long. It
might outlive him and the men of the Bloomington conven-
tion. It might mean war-would if there was an attempt
at disunion. But he vie:wed the future with a resolution
which seems never to have been shaken, though there is no
doubt his soul was often torn with agony at the thought of
the road to be traveled-its hates, its bitterness, its failures,
its deceptions.
He knew what he was about, however, and was prepared
to go where the road led.
People must be made to see what was at stake, that it was
the very heart of the country at which the repeal struck.
If he could help them to see that-he asked nothing more
for himself.
At the end of the campaign which the Bloomington con-
vention inaugurated, a campaign in which the new party, by
this time frankly calling itself Republican, though it was only
anti-Nebraska at the start-had wonderful success in Illinois,
electing a governor and actually giving Fremont, the Presi-
dential candidate nearly Ioo,ooo votes-he summed up at
a Republican banquet in Chicago his profound conviction that
in the long run the thing they were after could be done.
'Public opinion on. any subject,' he said in substance,
"has always a central idea. That central idea in our political
opinion is the equality of men. The late Presidential election
was a struggle to discard that central idea and to substitute
for it the opposite idea that slavery is right in the abstract.
Let us reinaugurate the good old central idea. We can do t ~
The human heart is with us. God is with us.'
[339]
That is where he had come after the two years' fight
against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The char-
acter of the fight he was making, his resolution and absorp
tion in it, are the more interesting because at this very time
he was carrying on the most important law work that he h ~
ever had. As a matter of fact, all of Lincoln's big law cases
were coincident with his fight against the extension of slavery.
[340]
XXVI
EDUCATING ILLINOIS
T
HESE United States have so far produced no finer model
for would-be politicians than Abraham Lincoln. But
they must be politicians more interested in upsetting wrong
and strengthening decency and right than in perpetuating a
party or in securing places for themselves. Lincoln is a
hopeless model for the dyed-in-the-wool partisan, and his
methods would keep a man out of office as often as they would
put him in.
These years that we are now following, from 1850 to
186o, have several political "high spots," and the inclination
has always been to see nothing in them but these spots-
moments when Lincoln emerged from what we have regarded
as obscurity and delivered a prophetic and soul-stirring
message and then dropped out of sight. Now, the high spots
are very high indeed, but heights were never reached by more
persistent climbing, every step of which was carefully and
considerately placed.
There was the first period of this decade, marked by the
speech he made in 18 54 on the Repeal of the Missouri Com-
promise-a speech at once profound and prophetic, which was
the crystallization of years of conscious and unconscious
reflection and study of the question of the extinction of
slavery, of the wrong of which he had never had any doubts.
Then followed two years of experiment-the search of
himself and those who felt as he did about the Repeal and
had a need of something more than protest-to fuse the
[341]
revolting elements into a practical working unit. It ended
in his bolting the Whigs and joining the anti-Nebraska or
Republican party. His second ''high spot" came at the first
formal convention of the new enterprise, in the speech which
has become one of Illinois' pet traditions-the "Lost Speech"
of May 2 ~ 1856. It was a speech which, like that of 8 5 ~
was hom of living with the subject.
In this interval between 1854 and 1856, Lincoln gave
probably half of his time to political work-unpaid, of course
-a tremendous sacrifice. It no doubt caused domestic irrita
tion, for it kept him poor, and yet he seems not to have
hesitated after the election of 1856 about going on. It is
the way he went on that matters. He was committed with
his fellows to educating Illinois to Republican principles-
the chief of which he declared was the Declaration of Inde-
pendence. That was what was at stake, and that was what
people must he made to understand. But he realized as well
or better than any man in Illinois that political education
hegins at home, and that if he was to teach he must learn.
One of the significant things about Lincoln at this time was
his incessant study of public opinion, his effort to understand
its fluctuations-its misconceptions and its progress. It was
the press on which he chiefly relied for this. I think it is
probably fair to say that there was not a paper in the state
that he did not know. He even got himself into domestic
trouble by the number to which he subscribed. One carrier at
least, attempting to deliver a copy of a new paper at the
house, was sent off by Mrs. Lincoln-curtly, we imagine,
from the note which Mr. Lincoln felt obliged to send to the
editor. "When the paper was brought to my house," he
wrote, "my wife said to me, 'Now, you are going to take
another worthless little paper.' I said to her, evasively, 'I
have not directed the paper to _he left.' In my absence she
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EDUCATING ILLINOIS
gave the message to the carrier-this is the whole story."
Considering the amount of time Mr. Lincoln had been giving
to public service, it is not at all surprising that Mary Lincoln
should feel grieved at further subscription to what she con
sidered a "worthless little paper!"
It was not only the Illinois press that Lincoln followed.
The Lincoln and Herndon law office in Springfield was one
of the chief newspaper headquarters of the town. Mr. Henry
B. Rankin, who was a student in this office from 1856 to 1861,
gives an illuminating picture of the way the two men kept
themselves abreast of public opinion, North and South. Mr.
Herndon subscribed to the leading Abolitionist papers of the
North, and it was Lincoln who said, "Let us have both sides
on our table. Each is entitled to its day in court." The
result was that there came regularly to them the Charleston
Courier, the Richmond Enquirer, the Louisville Journal and
the Southern Literary Messenger. To this latter, Mr. Rankin
says, Mr. Lincoln was particularly devoted, preserving the
copies. When he was "redding up" in 1861 before leaving
for Washington, he turned the file of Messengers over to
Mr. Rankin, asking him to keep them for him as he wanted
to have them bound when he came back. These periodicals
Mr. Rankin has recently placed in the Illinois Historical
Library. ,
All of this periodical literature was thoughtfully read
and discussed.
"The most remarkable circumstance that now impresses me," says
Mr. Rankin, "as I look back over daily intimacies with this law firm
from 1856 to 1861, was the student-like ways in which they both
steadfastly kept the average political affairs of the whole nation under
attention; using all sources and, in their private conferences and
discussions with each other, reviewing and sifting all conflicting
opinions on national questions that came to their office table from
North and South, East and West. Had they foreseen the political
C343]
and executive battles before Lincoln, his preparation could not have
been more thorough, exact and comprehensive to fit him for his duties
as President in t861-65."
Lincoln spent much time on party organization. In his
judgment, you should be able to know the political opinion
of every man in a district, and he believed this could be done
by making what he called a map of the field. "From the
poll books in the county clerk's office," he wrote in August,
1857, to a friend in Putnam County, "have made alphabetical
lists of all the voters in each precinct or township. This
will not be a heavy job, ... and you see how like a map
it lays the whole field before you and you know at once how
and with whom to work."
And he adds this significant advice: "Let all be so quiet
that the adversary shall not be notified."
One of his chief jobs was keeping the bolting Whigs and
Democrats from bolting their new allegiance. The new party,
as he said once, was "of strange discordant and even hostile
elements, ... gathered ~ o m the four winds." It was a
difficult matter for lifelong conservatives to pull in the same
harness with lifelong Abolitionists. Particularly did they
doubt the wisdom of allowing them office in the new party.
Here was Lovejoy seeking a place. It must not be. What
wiser, fairer counsel could a man give in such a situation-a
situation with which we are frequently confronted-than
that which Lincoln gave'? "If . . . upon a common plat-
form which all are willing to stand upon, one who has been
known as an Abolitionist, but who is now occupying none but
common ground, can get the majority of votes for which all
look for election, there is no safe way but to submit."
There is often amazement expressed at Lincoln's skill in
handling men in the Civil War, he who is supposed to have
had so little experience with men. Here was his school.
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EDUCATING ILLINOIS
From 18 54 to 186o he was a leader in wielding conservatives,
liberals and radicals of Illinois into a practical political
organization.
He dealt with every variety of rashness, emotionalism,
timidity, cowardice, trickery, as well as with all grades of
nobility and unselfishness. There was not much left for him
to learn about . human beings when he graduated into the
Presidency ! That is, they could not fool him long. His
success in the war was not divination. It was intensive
experience.
Although we have but one published address of Lincoln's
between the election of 18 s6 and his nomination for the
senatorship in June of 1858, he did much talking. He felt
so poor that he did not accept invitations to speak that would
necessitate special journeys, but wherever his legal work
carried him he talked. I spoke above of the Duff Armstrong
trial in Beardstown in May of 18 58-the case in which
Lincoln has been accused of using a falsified almanac-a
charge which all the documents as well as the kind of man he
was seem to show to be untrue. The evening after the trial he
spoke in the coQrt house, not a political speech, rather a first
attempt at a lecture on inventions on which he was then
working.
One of his Beardstown audience remembered that he spoke
about matches, recalling the first match that he ever saw,
and commenting on what a misfortune it would be if they
were wiped out. He talked on inventions, but dropped in
more or less political gospel. A story he told that stuck long
in the minds of his audience was of a man who appeared
at a Democratic rally with a basket of pups for sale. He
called them "Democratic pups"; a . few days later, at a
Republican meeting, he labeled them "Republican pups."
Somebody recognized him and asked him how it was that one
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week they were Democratic and the next Republican. "Oh,"
said the man, "the pups have their eyes open now." There
was more than one shrewd hearer in those times who, listening
to Lincoln's sober and earnest talk, concluded, "That's what
he's up to--'opening our eyes.' "
The pro-slavery party certainly gave him plenty of fresh
material to use in opening their eyes. He seized it with
avidity, turning it over and over, fitting it into what had
gone before, using it to build up his argument-each thing
was a part of a whole. There was the famous Dred Scott
decision.
Only four months after the election of 1856, with its big
demonstration of the strength of Republican feeling in the
country, the Supreme Court declared that Congress had no
power to keep slavery out of the territories. There was
tremendous fury in Illinois, angry talk, angry threats.
Lincoln kept so cool that he was irritating to many. His
whole mind was centered on working out the logic of this
new position and making others understand it. And what
did it mean but that all the efforts of the past to prevent the
spread of slavery were scrapped'? No use now to talk about
restoring the Missouri Compromise. The Compromise meant
nothing-never had meant anything, was illegal. The very
Ordinance of 1787 on which the freedom of Illinois itself was
based was of no account. And where did it leave the negro'?
"Condemned to universal and eternal bondage. All the
powers of the earth seem rapidly combining against him,"
Lincoln said. "Mammon is after him, ambition follows,
philosophy follows, and the theology of the day is fast join-
ing the crowd. They have him in his prison house. They
have searched his person and left no prying instrument
with him."
They must take a new tack-overrule the decision! Now,
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EDUCATING ILLINOIS
the public has always been sensitive about cnt1c1sm of the
Supreme Court. Naturally enough it would like to believe
it infallible-the one final authority which makes no mis-
takes. Mr. Douglas quickly seized on Mr. Lincoln's criticism
of the court-his call for an overruling. He was severe in
his denunciations of what he called Lincoln's resistance. "But
who is resisting it'?" said Lincoln. The overruling of a deci-
sion is no new thing in the history of the court. How about
General Jackson and his resistance in the matter of a national
bank'? "I have heard Mr. Douglas denounce that decision
and applaud General Jackson for disregarding it again and
again. It would be interesting," he said, "for him to look
over his recent speech and see how exactly his phillipics for
resisting Supreme Court decisions fall upon his own head."
There is an admirable contemporary lesson in his care-
fully thought out and carefully worded explanation of his
position:
"We believe as much as Judge Douglas (perhaps more) in obedi
ence to, and respect for, the judicial department of government. We
think its decisions on constitutional questions, when fully settled,
should control not only the particular cases decided, but the general
policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments
to the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than
this would be revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is
erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its
own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this.
We offer no resistance to it.
"Judkial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedents
according to circumstances. That this should be so accords both with
common sense and the customary understanding of the legal profession.
"If this important decision had been made by the unanimous con
currence of the judges, and without any apparent partisan bias, and
in accordance with legal public expectation and with the steady prac
tice of the departments throughout our history, and had been in no
part based on assumed historical facts which are not really true! or,
if wanting in some of these, it had been before the court more than
[347]
once, and had there been affirmed and reaffirmed through a course of
years, it then might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolu
tionary, not to acquiesce in it as a precedent.
"But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all these claims to
the public confidence, it is not resistance, it is not factious, it is not
even disrespectful to treat it as not having yet quite established a
settled doctrine for the country."
As 1857 went on, it became increasingly difficult for
Lincoln to adhere to his determination to keep his mind and
the mind of his followers on the central issue of freedom.
It became very difficult, indeed, when, in the fall of 1857,
Douglas broke with Buchanan and a majority of his party
over the constitution which the pro-slavery people had man-
aged to force on Kansas, in spite of a l e ~ r anti-slavery
majority in the new state. Nobody denied the majority, but
trickery and violence had put over a pro-slavery constitution.
And it was on this that Douglas broke with his associates,
violently and eloquently. His doctrine of Squatter Sov-
ereignty left it to the people to decide. It was not intended
that that doctrine should be manipulated to defeat the
majority rule. If the majority wanted slaves they had a
right to have it so. He didn't care whether they voted slavery
up or down, but he did care whether there was a free expres ..
sion of public will, and that there had not been.
In a great fight the tendency is to think only of the
manreuver of the moment, that is all-important. Douglas
was now on the side of a free Kansas, therefore Douglas was
an asset for those who were fighting against the extension
of slavery. Thousands of Democrats all over the North who
had been pulling away from him flocked back. Many an
Illinois Republican, a former Whig, whose mind had been
so centered on the fight in Kansas that he had come to believe
that the one issue was what happened to Kansas, turned
with a certain relief to Douglas, who was, after all, the
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EDUCATING ILLINOIS
country's great man. Greeley and the Tribune were strong
for winning him to the Republican party ..
Lincoln's idea from the first had been that the Repub-
licans should stand clear of what he called the "rumpus among
the Democrats over the Kansas constitution." "In their
view," he wrote, "both the President and Douglas were
wrong, and they should not espouse the cause of either,
because they may consider him either a little less or farther
wrong of the two." But the espousing went on, so did the
"eulogizing and admiring and magnifying" of Douglas !
Here was a new task-to show that Douglas' revolt had
nothing to do with the heart of the matter. It was on a
point over which he and the Republicans had never differed,
Lincoln declared-the right of a people to make their own
constitution. It did not touch the original Nebraska doctrine.
Douglas was still educating people to care nothing about
slavery-and slavery was wrong-contrary to the Declaration
of Independence.
His insistence brought ridicule from Douglas, taking ad-
vantage, of course, of the revulsion of feeling that his revolt
against Buchanan had brought him. Why this appeal to the
Declaration of Independence from Lincoln'? The Declaration
had nothing to do with negroes. It referred to the white race
alone, and to only a limited part of the white race. "The
people who framed the Declaration of Independence," an-
nounced Mr. Douglas, "were speaking of British subjects on
this continent being equal to British subjects born and raised
in Great Britain." This insincere and contemptuous talk
gave Lincoln a fine chance to arouse his serious and reflective
hearers, and to set down, too, just what he thought the men
who framed the Declaration of Independence did mean.
"They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, moral de-
velopments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinct-
[349]
ness in what respect they did consider all men created e q u l ~ u l
with 'certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.' This they said, and this they meant. They
did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually
enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it im-
mediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a
boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that enforcement
of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.
"They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which
should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to,
constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, con-
stantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening
its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all
people of all colors everywhere. The assertion that 'all men are
created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from
Great Britain ; and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but
for future use. Its authors meant it to be-as, thank God, it is now
proving itself-a stumbling-block to all those who, in after times,
might seek to tum a free people back into the hateful paths of despot-
ism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and
they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence
their vocation, they should find left for them at least one hard nut to
crack."
It was to take Douglas some time to find that it was a
nut too hard for him to crack!
This persistent appeal to fundamentals was disconcert-
ing to Douglas. One gets the impression that he felt it was
hardly fair play in politics to be so serious. One senses, too,
constant irritation at Lincoln's persistent attack on his state-
ment of facts-false through carelessness oftener, probably,
than through malice or intent. Douglas was an orator.
There was always a great deal of what Mr. Lincoln called
"the roar of loose declamation" about his speeches. Lincoln
knew-nobody better-the weakness of rotund periods, how
they are the pitfalls of orators, trapping them into statements
which when analyzed fall apart because they have little or
no basis of fact. He was almost pitiless in his insistent
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EDUCATING ILLINOIS
pursuit of Douglas' reckless oratorical statements. John
Bunn, one of the most interesting of the Springfield men of
later years who knew Lincoln, used to tell a significant story
illustrating this.
In October of 1854, the day after Douglas had made his
first speech in Springfield, explaining his doctrine of Squatter
Sovereignty, Lincoln met Bunn on the sidewalk.
"Did you hear the speech of Judge Douglas last night'?"
he asked.
"Yes," Mr. Bunn said.
"What did you think of it'?"
"Mr. Lincoln, I think it was a very able speech, and you
will have a great deal of trouble to answer it."
"I will answer that speech without any trouble," Mr.
Lincoln replied, "because Mr. Douglas made two mis-
statements of fact, and upon these two misstatements he built
his whole argument. I can show that his facts are not facts,
and that will refute his speech."
"I was present," Mr. Bunn added, "and heard the reply
which Mr. Lincoln made to Judge Douglas' speech, and to my
mind he did disprove Douglas' facts, and, as I thought, com-
pletely answered his argument."
People were constantly having that experience-Lincoln
was right, Douglas was wrong. It was said so often that
it finally made him the unquestioned leader of the Repub-
licans in Illinois. There were many able and devoted men
in the party, but for nobody was there quite the same con-
fidence and respect. When it came time, as it did in the
spring of 1858, for the Republican party to nominate a
candidate to contest the senatorship with Judge Douglas,
there was little or no question that Lincoln would be the
choice. So it turned out. He was nominated in Springfield
in June-"the first and only choice of the convention." The
[351]
night after the nomination he struck another of the high spots,
the highest yet-too high for his party's safety, many of his
followers thought; yet in the speech that he made on the
night of June 17, 1858, all that he said was but a freer and
larger putting of the ideas which you find working like seeds
in what he had been saying in the last four years. The
speech is a splendid example of the natural growth and
development of a man's mind when concentrated on a vital
expanding theme. We know this speech as "the house divided
against itself speech." So important is it in the history of
the Republican party that they have put up a tablet in the
court room in Springfield where it was delivered.
It put the issue so unequivocally that men shrank from
it. "I believe this Government cannot endure permanently
half slave and half free. I do not expect the house to fall,
but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become
all one thing or all the other." It was something nobody
could get away from. Men might not be able to read, but
they could still understand what these words meant. And
he followed it by that extraordinary paragraph in which he
pictured the campaign of pro-slavery advocates to make the
house all their kind of thing. Nobody could doubt after
that speech what the Republican party was facing. It left
no haze in any mind that thought.
But, of course, few think. And, after all, few heard him
or would read the Springfield speech. He must go on, edu
eating, bringing more and more of that great Illinois mass
to see what was at stake, to understand that here was an
attack on freedom, and that the time had come when they
were must face the fact that it was in danger, and decide
whether they were willing or not to fight for it.
Douglas came into the field in June to stay until
November. He sensed, better than anybody else, that he had
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EDUCATING ILLINOIS
a real fight on his hands. In those months he spoke fully one
hundred fifty times, and Lincoln, usually trailing him, almost
.as many. But we forget the one hundred forty or so speeches
and think only of the seven occasions on which the two men
met on the same platform, answering each other, point by
point. Lincoln's friends had been anxious for these meetings;
the more thoughtful of them felt that this was the only way in
which Lincoln could really overcome the fascination of
Douglas' presence and oratory, his "greatness," the gain he
had made b3 his fight against the bogus Kansas constitution.
Pin him down, face to face, and you have got h1m. And
Lincoln believed it, and so, after delays and hesitation on
Douglas' part, it was arranged.
Lincoln went into the debates, held in October of 1858,
saturated with his theme-his mind convinced of the sound-
ness of his argument and his faith in the end unwavering.
"The result is not doubtful," he told his followers. "We
shall not fail; if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise
counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but sooner or
later the victory is sure to come."
The sentences have the quality of those bits of English
which we call his masterpieces, and they have, too, the tone
of the prophet. It was a high spirit in which to undertake.
a great contest.
[353]
XXVII
A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT
A
PILGRIMAGE worth all the time and money it will
cost the historically inclined American is a tour of the
seven Illinois towns, 'in which in the fall of 1858 Abraham
Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas met in joint debate, rounding
out a four months' campaign of stump speaking on the
question of slavery extension.
Luckily for the pilgrim, the Illinois State Historical
Society published a few years ago a volume on the debates
which, if bulky, is the most comprehensive and illuminating
guidebook a traveler could have, for this volume contatns
not only the texts of the debates but contemporary comments
on both sides-recollections, specimens of the humor, descrip
tions of scenes; and it prints illustrations, the most of which
have never before found their way into any volume. If you
ever undertake this journey, beginning at Ottawa in the north
of Illinois, thence to Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Gales
burg, Quincy and Alton-a full round of the state you will
see if you look at the map-by all means take along a copy
of the "Lincoln and Douglas Debates of 1858, edited, with
Introduction and Notes, by Edwin Erle Sparks," and pub-
lished in Springfield, Illinois, in 1908.
There are two things a serious traveler should have
clearly in mind, and the first is that these seven debates were
not an isolated incident; they were the climax of a long
struggle. Remember, too, that Lincoln and Douglas both
came to them with the backbone of their argument fully
[354]
A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT
developed, repeatedly reiterated. Douglas had from the .start
rung the changes on the theory by which he justified the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise; that is, that it should be
left to the inhabitants of each territory to decide whether
or no they wanted slavery. At the same time he was defend-
ing the decision of the Supreme Court, handed down two years
after the Repeal, declaring that Congress had no power to
prevent the introduction of slavery into a territory.
Mr. Lincoln's effort was to destroy the position-destroy
it historically, politically and morally-to show that these
various doctrines lead to nothing less than the nationalization
of slavery, that Douglas was willing to lend his strength to
this result because he did not think slavery wrong-did not
care whether it was extended or not. The joint debates set
these positions forth more clearly, logically and forcefully
because the two men faced each other and were forced to
consider at the moment each other's statements and arguments.
Another thing that must be remembered in considering
these debates is that it was not merely two men-it was a
whole state discussing. It is doubtful if ever in the history
of this country there has been at any time anywhere so general
and long-extended popular discussion as that in Illinois
between 1854 and 1858 on the extension of slavery. Every-
body that could mount a rostrum and make a speech was
doing it by this time. The work of Lincoln's partner, Billy
Herndon, is an illustration. In Joseph Fort Newton's admi-
rable study of Lincoln and Herndon, based on letters ex-
changed between Theodore Parker and Herndon in this period,
you find constant reference to the work he was doing on the
platform. Like Lincoln, he was neglecting business, going
wherever he could get an audience, big or little, writing edi
torials, keeping the post busy with letters. And what Hem-
don was doing, at least half of the lawyers in Illinois were
[355]
doing to a greater or less degree. Every schoolhouse, every
pulpit, was a forum. At every country grocery, every post
office, every four corners groups had been going over and over
the pros and cons of the matter for four years. The people of
Illinois were saturated with the theme, so that when the
debates were announced they flocked to hear their leaders,
prepared and eager to listen.
Nothing but an interest which was almost an obsession
could have induced people to leave their employments and
travel, as they did, over long distances in heat and dust and
wind, to the centers selected. Such was the interest, particu-
larly of young men, that there were those who, like the late
Clark Carr of Galesburg, trailed from place to place, as sport
fans follow "events" to-day. The discomfort of it to one who
looks at it from present standards seems intolerable. The
best authentic picture of the crowds arid their habits that I
have come across appeared in the New York Evening Post.
You'll find it in your guidebook.
"Over long, weary miles of hot and dusty prairie," it reads, "from
Charleston on the procession of eager partisans came-on foot, on horse-
back, in wagons drawn by horses or mules ; men, women and children,
old and young; the half sick, just out of the last 'shake'; children in
arms, infants at the maternal fount, pushing on in clouds of dust and
beneath a blazing sun; settling down at the town where the meeting
is with hardly a chance for sitting, and even less opportunity for eating,
waiting in anxious groups for hours at the places ~ speaking, talking,
discussing, litigious, vociferous, while the roar of artillery, the music
of bands, the waving of banners, the huzzas of the crowds, as delegation
after delegation appears ; the cry of peddlers, vending all sorts of
wares, from an infallible cure of 'agur' to a monstrous watermelon in
slices to suit purchasers-combining to render the occasion one scene of
confusion and commotion. The hour of one arrives, and a perfect rush
is made for the grounds; a column of dust rising to the heavens and
fairly deluging those who are hurrying on through it. Then the speakers
come, with flags, and banners, and music, surrounded by cheering par-
tisans. Their arrival at the grounds and immediate approach to the
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A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT
stand is the signal for shouts that rend the heavens. They are intro-
duced to the audience amid prolonged and enthusiastic cheers ; they are
interrupted by frequent applause, and they sit down finally amid the
same uproarious demonstrations. The audience sit or stand patiently
throughout, and as the last word is spoken, make a break for their
homes, first hunting up lost members of their families, gathering their
scattered wagon loads together, and as the daylight fades away, entering
again upon the broad prairies and slowly picking their way back 'to
the place of beginning.' "
This, with variations, is the scene which one must have
before his eyes as he visits every point of a Lincoln and
Douglas debate.
There was a dramatic contrast between the men them-
selves, their appearance, temper, career, that stirred and fas-
cinated the crowd. It was the contrast between elegance and
ruggedness, elaboration and simplicity, a sophistication that
did not hesitate at misrepresentation and an honesty almost
childlike. It was particularly marked in their voice, platform
manners, approach to their audience. Douglas had a deep
bass voice, sonorous and tremendously effective; but he used
it recklessly, hurting it by too free drinking of water during
his speech, and by the time he had reached AI ton, the last
debate, he could not make his audience hear. Mr. Lincoln's
voice had none of the appealing quality of Douglas'. It was
high and. shrill but penetrating, and he must have known,
consciously or unconsciously, how to place it, for, in spite of
the terrific strain of the summer and fall's work, it never
failed him.
Douglas was a joy to the reporters, he was "strongly
regular" according to one of them ; "he was distinct, he
paused between sentences, he used short sentences, he rarely
exceeded one hundred and twenty words a minute. It was
no trouble to report Douglas for he did not utter nearly
so many words as Lincoln in a given period."
[357]
"Lincoln was quite different, his voice was clear, almost
shrill, every syllable was distinct but his delivery was puzzling
to stenographers; he would speak several words with great
rapidity, come to the word he wished to emphasize and let
his voice linger and bear hard on that. To impress the idea
on the minds of his hearers was his aim; not to charm the ear
with flowing words. It was very easy to understand Lincoln;
he spoke with great clearness but his delivery was very
irregular.''
There is another feature of the debates which those who
use well the guidebook will notice and that is that Douglas
had practically one speech, but that no two of Lincoln's
speeches were alike. This was so nearly true that the stenog-
raphers would stop taking notes when Douglas reached
certain points in his address, and taking their shears would
cut out the paragraphs from some previously printed report
and paste them into their copy. It led to a famous joke
among them. The Chicago Times, Douglas' chief supporter,
was accused of garbling Lincoln's speeches in a way that
frequently made it appear that he was talking nonsense.
"The Times," said one of the reporters, "mucilages Douglas
and mutilates Lincoln."
If you linger long enough in the towns on this pilgrictage,
you will be sure to run across somebody that remembers a
particular episode of the discussion. It was here, he will
tell you, that Lincoln, or Douglas, as the case may be, did
so-and-so. At Ottawa the story you are sure
to hear is of Douglas' attempt to fix on Lincoln, by docu-
mentary proof, the charge of Abolitionism that he had been
making for some time. He read a set of resolutions which
he said had been adopted at the convention in Springfield in
the fall of 1854, the convention which young Paul Selby and
some of his earnest and enthusiastic friends had called and
[358]
A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT
in which, after they had heard Lincoln's reply to J;>ouglas,
they had voted him to be of their stripe. Now, the resolutions
adopted by Paul Selby's group were not more radical than
Mr. Lincoln's speech of 'that date-they merely declared
against any further extension of slavery. But the resolutions
that Douglas read were, for the period, decidedly more ob-
jectionable; he called them "black Republican." All Mr.
Lincoln could say was that he never subscribed to them, that
he was not present, as Douglas declared that he had been,
at the Springfield convention, and that, though he had been
appointed a delegate, he had declined.
But it was a halting disavowal, with no proofs. It was
left for a lively young man who was reporting the debates
for the Chicago Press and Tribune, Robert Hitt, later to be
for many years a member of Congress and an honored citizen
of the country, to discover that, knowingly or not, Douglas
had read a set of resolutions adopted at an entirely different
meeting, held at a different place. "Forgery!" Lincoln's
supporters cried; and many a man, a youth then, will tell
you that that incident was the base of a growing doubt of
Stephen Douglas. It justified a remark which Lincoln is said
to have dropped about this time to a friend, and which was
passed around the state, that Douglas was perfectly willing
to lie to 1o,ooo people, even if he knew that it would be
proved to 5,ooo the next day that he had lied. This was con-
sidered good tactics. There were 5 ,ooo that would not hear
the proofs of the lie.
It worked that way in this charge of Abolitionism. It
took hold. The late James Lowry of Minneapolis, a boy of
fifteen at the time of the debates, living on a farm riear
Beardstown who with his father heard every speech that was
made in a radius of a considerable number of miles, used to
tell a story which illustrates the feeling. Y.oung Lowry
[359]
was in a group following Mr. Lincoln up the street in Rush-
ville. The whole population was out, among them many
young women prominent in society, some of them, according
to Mr. Lowry, "very dark complected." One of these girls,
stepping in front of Lincoln, dangled a little negro doll baby
in his face. He turned to her quietly and said, "Madam, are
you the mother of that'?" "It created quite a sensation in
that small town," says Mr. Lowry!
The charge that Lincoln believed in "negro equality"
finally became so serious an embarrassment to his supporters
that one of them, Capt. J. N. Brown, of Berlin, Illinois, asked
him for a clear statement which he could use in debates.
Lincoln's answer is a fine illustration of the infinite pains the
man was willing to take to make a position clear. He
bought a little black-covered note book, and in it wrote what
we may call the preface-the words reproduced on the next
page. Following this he pasted in several newspaper
clippings from his speeches, showing exactly his position, and
each of these quotations he prefaced by a few written words
telling their source. He followed the whole by a letter of
500 words in which he reiterates in brief what he regards as
the substance of the extracts that he had given.
The only book by Abraham Lincoln which has ever been
published is this little one prepared for Capt. Brown. The
late J. McCan Davis of Springfield, Illinois, secured for
McClure-Phillips Co., in 1903, the permission to publish it in
facsimile, and prepared the introductory note which goes
with the book. It is now a rare document, the edition having
been exhausted.
At Freeport you will find, not only from your guidebook
but from thoughtful inhabitants, if you are lucky enough to
meet them, that the feature of the debate there was a question
which Lincoln propounded to Douglas, forcing him to make
[36o]
A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT
an answer showing the inconsistency of his position, his effort
to make the South believe that they could carry their slaves
into the territories, the North to believe that they could keep
them out, in spite of Repeal and Dred Scott decision-a

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FACSIMILE OF FOREWORD WRI'ITEN BY A. LINCOLN IN A CAMPAIGN BOOK
COMPILED BY HIM IN 1858 FOR A FRIEND.
position which Mr. Lincoln aptly characterized later as an
argument that a thing may be lawfully driven away from
where it has a lawful right to be!
And so it goes. At Quincy you will be sure to be told
the story which so delighted its hearers as well as those who
hear it for the first time to-day, of Lincoln's pulling off his
[361]
coat and saying to the boy to whom he handed it, "Here, you
hold my coat while I stone Stephen."
"And he did do it, good and plenty," a fine old lady told
me recently, who, a young girl then, was in his group of
hearers.
As the debates went on the interest of the crowd was in
tensified and solemnized by a growing sense of certain inner
differences between the two men which they had not at first
realized.
Here was Douglas publicly confident, superior, treating
Lincoln from the start with a smiling tolerance-he was a
"kind, amiable gentleman" who had been "submerged" after
a term in Congress, now in where only the "great"-
like himself-should be treading. That was Douglas' out-
ward platform manner toward Lincoln, but privately he was
more honest. More than one of those who have told their
recollections of those days, intimates of Douglas, have re-
corded the reluctance which he confessed to have in meeting
Lincoln. The "kind, amiable gentleman" of the platform
became in these sober and honest moments a man of ability,
a skillful debater whom he dreaded to meet. Mr. James
Milliken, the founder of the Milliken University in Decatur,
used to tell of a talk he had with Douglas in that town after
the challenge had passed and been accepted. The people
of the country, Douglas told Milliken, "expect me literally
to eat Lincoln up, and I cannot do it-nor can any other
mari.."
Douglas' followers did expect it. They showed it by their
favorite headline:
"THE LITTLE GIANT CHA WING UP OLD ABE"
Douglas' followers, so far as I know, never shared his
doubt.of the contest. They were completely under the sway
[362]
A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT
of his dominating magnetic personality. His great swaying
head, the deep roar of his voice, the eloquence of his words,
his elegant presence, his years of success, gave them the feel-
ing that he was indomitable. And he played up to their
adoration.
David Locke (Petroleum V. Nasby), then an Ohio editor,
attracted by the quality of the debates, went out to Illinois,
to see and hear for himself. He records /his impression of
the difference between the two men in their opening words. at
Quincy: Lincoln "venturing to say" that both he and Douglas
would perfectly agree that entire silence would be most wel-
come to them; Douglas announcing, "I desire to be heard
rather than be applauded." "Lincoln claimed nothing for
himself," says Locke; "Douglas spoke as if applause must
follow his utterances." He characterized the incident as
illustrative of "inborn modesty" on the one hand and "bound-
less vanity" on the other.
Slowly but surely the impression spread that Mr. Douglas'
smiling patronage of Lincoln concealed anxiety, that though
Lincoln admitted frankly that he had been a "flat failure,"
he was unafraid, could not be pushed off the track. The
sense of his absolute faith that Douglas was wrong and he
was right deepened. Little by little his boldness in the face
of the great man, his refusal to be beaten down, diverted,
humiliated, took strong hold on people.
As Douglas felt Lincoln's argument tightening around
him, pinning him in, found that his attempts to stir up preju-
dice by charges of abolitionism and sectionalism, his efforts
to divert attention by irrelevant personalities, were gaining
him nothing, that he was failing in every effort to throw Lin-
coln into confusion, he began to lose his temper, to rage-
exhibits that to those straight-minded people only too plainly
showed that his confidence was breaking. It was on. one of
[363]
these occasions when Douglas had exploded in wrath that
Lincoln told them, with cool, grim confidence: "I've got
him."
It is not to be concluded that Lincoln himself never lost
his even tenor. Read your guidebook carefully and you will
find more than once irritation at irrelevances. At Charleston
some one will be sure to tell you how, exasperated beyond
control by Douglas' charges that he had refused to vote
money for supplies in the Mexican War, he seized a Demo-
cratic colleague of those days and dragged him to the platform,
angrily crying: "Here is a man who personally knows it to
be a lie!" And the man had to admit it was. There are pri-
vate remarks recorded, too, not only of irritation but of a cer-
tain contempt. "At least," he told some friends one.day, "I
don't have to drag my wife along with me as Judge Douglas
does to see that I don't get drunk."
Now, people are serious. They resent being played with.
They resent an assumption that they can be persuaded to carry
water on both shoulders. They will rise to an appeal to their
honesty, and more and more Lincoln's appeal to the integrity
of their intellects as well as to the honesty of their belief in
the wickedness of slavery grew upon them. Douglas was
flippant. Lincoln never was. One lifelong Missouri Demo-
crat, hearing the two men at Alton, went home to say he
was done with Douglas, he was a "jumping-jack."
The deep sincerity of Lincoln's seriousness impressed peo-
ple more and more. It was almost forbidding at the opening
of some of his debates-that long, slow-lifting form, that
sad furrowed face, that overwhelming sense of the gravity of
the matter that he was discussing. This seriousness seems to
have taken hold of youth particularly, and we must remember
that the men now living who heard the Lincoln and Douglas
debates were boys 12, 14 and 16 years of age at that time.
[364]
A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT
Recently at Beardstown, Kentucky, I talked with Colonel
Wickliffe, one of the few Kentucky Republicans of 1858. He
told me that his interest in the debates was so great that when
the t:wo men reached the southern part of Illinois he went over
to hear them. What impressed him about Lincoln, and what
he talks of to-day, was the man's dignity and sincerity. "He
knew and felt all that he said; he was simple and plain, but he
moved you profoundly."
"And how about Douglas'?" I asked.
"Oh, Douglas," said Colonel Wickliffe, "was an orator."
Judge Fifer of Bloomington records a similar impression
of Lincoln. The first time that Judge Fifer heard Lincoln
was in September, 1858, at Bloomington. Douglas had
spoken there to such good purpose that Lincoln's backers-
Leonard Swett, Jesse Fell and Judge David Davis-three as
important men as he had behind him-urged him to make a
reply. Judge Fifer describes how he and his brother wormed
their way to the edge of the platform. After "a beautiful
introduction" by Leonard Swett, Lincoln rose. "It seemed
like he never would get through getting up," Fifer said. "It
was hard for him to get started, and one of the boys near me
said we ought to have nominated Swett. But when he once
got hold of himself I never heard such a speech; it fairly
raised the hair on my head and made my heart stop beating.
The crowd was silent as death, their faces riveted upon him;
he was the most earnest man I ever heard talk."
Again and again to-day one runs upon men who as boys
record this impression of a profound, almost tragic seriousness.
These boys were important! Mr. W. T. Norton of Alton,
Illinois, has recorded his impressions as a boy of the debate
held in that town, the last of the series. One thing that he
notes should never be forgotten in the history of these debates
-it is safe to say that it is true of every town in which the two
[365]

Laat Great Dilcuuion.
::;U takt notice, that on Fri-
day nex : S. A. Douou.s and
A. will bold the
-lf!\enth and dosing joint debate of
at thiJ place. We
lr,pc tht oountry will tu.rn out, to
a. wan, to hear these gentlemen.
'1 he following programme for
thP. discu"ion baa been decided
upon by the Joint Committee ap-
pointed by the People'!i Party
Club and the Democratic Club. for
that purpote.
Anar ..... c- 11M at &Ia
'l'bt twc oo ... froaa taeb par-
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llle.,,, for lbt pabli.o oa &bt 15tb
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JowiDI of ...
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the tatt ,;de ot Oit1
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e&id day.
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t.a a 10 ertot a pia&
furm; .1.11,, te&CI to
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batt pown &O
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ud Lr!jcOL,. bt a qutl oat, N4 "
publio ditpl&J.
':'l'l. Tll.a ao b .... Ot aot&o, _..,. ...
lioaal oolon, .:..U bt .Uoncl oa &1M
lpNtn' t&aM.
OD aotioa, a CI)IDDi"-t oa.illtiat ot
MtNrt. W. C. ud H. G. llkPau,
be appoictecl loCI lobll l":orna ol
prooeediap, W. 0.. QUWLEY.
B. G. 14cPll.E.
/lJ.? .. , hl. " 11)1.
To U.. abon i' eboa14 bt lM& Uat
O. A Bl. Locil Railroad, will, oe Frid&J
C&fT1 PIMDCtrt lO &ltd frta M
half '" ueal eacw. Pertou _. ooat ia
oa lob 10:40.&. t.n.&a, &DCtao oil' a.& G:20
iD tYIIWD
ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE A/-
ton Daily Whig.
Reproduced in Volume III. of
the Illinois State Historical
Library Collections, Lincoln
Seriea.
men spoke-and that is that nine-
tenths of the boys who in Alton
cheered for Lincoln or. Douglas
three years later were cheering
for the Union, and were soon
carrying muskets or wearing
shoulder straps in the Union
army. The great debates were a
school for boys. What they did
from 1861 to 1865 shows some-
thing of the depth of the feeling
the discussion aroused.
The debate at Alton on Octo-
ber 15 was the last of the series.
Lincoln's supporters who heard
him declared that it was the
greatest speech he had yet made.
In it he reviewed his entire ar-
gument, bringing it down to what
he considered the crux of the
whole matter. There are two
memorable paragraphs in this
speech:
"The real issue in this controversy
-the one pressing upon every mind
-is the sentiment on the part of one
class that looks upon the institution
of slavery as a wrong, and of another
class that does not look upon it as a
wrong. The sentiment that contem-
plates the institution of slavery in
this country as a wrong is the senti-
ment of the Republican party. It is
the sentiment around which all their
actions, all their arguments, circle ;
[366]
A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT
from which all their propositions radiate. They look upon it as being
a moral, social, and political wrong; and while they contemplate it as
such they nevertheless have due regard for its actual existence among
us, and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and
to all the constitutional obligations thrown about it. Yet having a
due regard for these, they desire a policy in regard to it that looks to
its not creating any more danger. They insist that it, as far as may be,
be treated as a wrong, and one of the methods of treating it as a wrong
is to make provision that it shall grow no larger."
"That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this
country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be
silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles-right
and wrong-throughout the world. They are the two principles that
have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever o n ~
tinue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the
other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever
shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says: 'You toil and
work and earn bread and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes,
whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of
his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of
men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrana.ical
principle."
A few days after the close of the debates came the test
of what they had done-the election of November, 1858-
. a majority of nearly 4,000 votes for Lincoln over Douglas.
As between the two men a majority of the people of Illinois
believed that Lincoln had it right. They were unwilling to
admit that if one man chose to enslave another, no third man
should be allowed to object.
Lincoln had won the people, but he had not won the
Senatorship. It is the Legislature that elects, and there Doug-
las had a majority of eight.
"I suppose everybody but Billy Herndon will go back
on me now," Lincoln was heard to say after the returns came
in. But, though he may have felt his defeat enough to show
it in private, you do not find a trace in his letters. His po-
sition was the same, almost regal one that it had been in 1854,
[367]
in 1856. It was but another round in a long fight. Now, as
always, it was a "durable" struggle they had on hand. Their
victory was sure, but it would be one "of endurance born."
"I have an abiding faith," he wrote to a friend, "that we shall
beat them in the long run. Step by step the objects of the
leaders will become too plain for the people to stand them.
I write merely to let you know that I am neither dead nor
dying." And to another: "You are feeling badly, but 'This
too shall pass away,' never fear."
As for himself, his serenity was superb. "I think we have
fairly entered upon a durable struggle as to whether this
nation is to ultimately become all slave or all free, and
although I fall early in the contest it is nothing if I shall have
contributed in the least degree to the final rightful result.''
There was no chance for him to "fall" now-East and
West clanunered to see and hear him.
XXVIII
THE COUNTRY WANTS TO SEE LINCOLN
I
F by any lucky chance there should turn up in Massachu-
setts, Wisconsin or California, somebody of Abraham
Lincoln's caliber, to dispute the Senatorship with Mr. Lodge,
Mr. La Follette, or Mr. Johnson, and these gentlemen should
be forced, as Stephen A. Douglas was in 1858, to debate, day
in and day out, for some four months, the principles under-
lying such a question as, let us say, the finding a peaceful
substitute for war in the settling of international disputes,
and the debate should take on something of the character of
the Lincoln and Douglas debate, do you not suppose that
after it was over, we, the people, would be very keen to see
the stranger who had dared contest with the celebrated and
long-established Mr. Lodge, Mr. La Follette or Mr. Johnson'?
We would. And from all over the country we would invite
him to come and speak to us, wanting to judge for ourselves
whether or no a leader who measured up to something like
the democratic spirit within us had at last appeared.
That was the way people felt in many parts of the coun-
try after the Lincoln and Douglas debates. They wanted
to see and hear Lincoln. But Lincoln was "broke," "hard
up," and for the moment pushed off the advances the country
was making. It was "bad to be poor," but if he neglected his
business another year as he had the last, he would "go to the
wall for bread and meat." When the chairman of the State
Republican Committee, his friend Norman B. Judd, asked
him to help out on the expenses of the campaign, he some-
[369]
what reluctantly consented that Judd put him down for $250,
which was to be settled when they cleaned up "the private
matter between us"-the private matter being a considerable
loan which Lincoln had made to Judd-a note which seems
not to have been paid until Lincoln's estate was settled in
186 5, for in the list of his assets we find Judd's note for
$3,000. It is one of several evidences that Lincoln loaned
freely at this time, as at all times, to his friends-so freely
that he was often cramped for money for current expenses.
The upkeep of his family was increasing for he had by
this time three boys-Robert, old enough now to be in Phillips
Exeter, preparing for Harvard, and a considerable expense
of course, and at home, Willie, about eight years old, and
Thomas, five. Mary Lincoln was hospitable-to those of
whom she approved-and entertained as handsomely as other
women in her Springfield circle. She reckoned more highly
than Mr. Lincoln the political value of social life, and when
the Legislature was in session in Springfield, or when there
were important gatherings of any sort, she was sure to "give
something." The cost of some of her parties seems rather
surprising. For instance, the entertaining Mrs. Johns, of
Decatur, tells of being snowbound on her way from Chicago
to Springfield in January of 1855, along with a large number
of legislators and politicians going to the capital for the
election of Senator-the election in which Mr. Lincoln was a
candidate but finally withdrew his vote in favor of Lyman
Trumbull. The train was stalled for upwards of a week,
and there would have been more actual suffering from hun-
ger than there was if it had not been that two Chicago ca-
terers were also on their way to Springfield-one with a
supper for a reception to three hundred people that Mrs.
Lincoln was giving, the other with supplies for a big dinner
at the Governor's mansion. The hungry travelers bought out
[370]
COUNTRY WANTS TO SEE LINCOLN
the caterers, but Mrs. Johns does not tell us whether or no
Mrs. Lincoln ever held her reception !
Two years later, February, 1857, we find Mrs. Lincoln
writing to a sister in Kentucky:
"I may surprise you when I mention that I am from the
slight fatigue of a very large and, I really believe, a very handsome
and agreeable entertainment, at least our friends flatter us by saying so.
About five hundred were invited, yet owing to an unlucky rain three
hundred only favored us by their presence. And the same evening in
Jacksonville, Colonel Warren gave a bridal party to his son, which
occasion robbed us of some of our friends. You will think we
our borders since you were here."
This enlarging of her social borders went on steadily-
and all that cost money! Lincoln's correspondence shows
that he went immediately after the debates of 1858 hard at
the law, and also that he had hopes of earning a little by lec-
turing. There are evidences that he long had had this possi-
bility in mind. In 1839, we find a lecture of his given before
the young men's lyceum of Springfield, printed at their request
in one of the local papers. In his complete works, Nicolay
and Hay, his secretaries, include several fragments-"notes
for lectures"-which they found among his papers. Quick
as he was to take a hint, that is, to ask himself whether this
or that thing that somebody else was doing was not possible
for him, it was natural that he should think of the platform.
Population considered, there were probably as many speakers
and readers, English and domestic, going up and down the
Mississippi Valley in those days as there are now. Both
Dickens and Thackeray had been West. Emerson was in
Springfield in 1853, and gives a rather lugubrious picture
of the town and of his quarters there, also of his fears that
his time was not going to be paid any such rate as was
promised him. It would be interesting to know whether Lin
coln heard him. At all events, lecturing. was one of the things
[371]
that ambitious men of his type of mind tried out, and in the
year following the Lincoln and Douglas debates he under-
took a talk on "Discoveries and lnventions"-a subject which
had always fascinated him and to which in one way or another
his activities had contributed. When he was in Congress
he had spent many an hour in the Patent Office at the time
he sought a patent for his contrivance for getting boats over
shoals-the model is still to be seen on the shelves of the
Patent Office. He had a mind that no matter what interested
it-a principle, a custom, a tool-went back to the start
and traced the growth of the particular thing. Discoveries
and inventions, their beginnings, their progress, their future
-he never tired of studying them, speculating about them,
and this lecture that he now tried, with the hope of earning
a little extra money, was the outcome of long thinking and
observation. He gave the paper only a few times, and with-
out any particular success, in his judgment. He doubted
whether it was worth the little sum he was paid; but there
are observations in it which convince one that it was more of
a lecture than he thought. For instance, "How could the
'gopher wood' for the ark have been gotten out without an
x e ~ It seems to me an axe or a miracle was indispensable!"
His speculation about the use of wind as a motive power
is interesting. He thought that possibly one of the greatest
discoveries of the future would be the taming and harnessing
of the wind. In line with his thinking in this lecture is the
talk on the plow, whether or no it was possible to get some
other force for running it than man's own muscular power,
which is to be found in an address which he gave at the
State Fair at Milwaukee late in 1859. It might be Henry
Ford talking!
"I have thought a good deal in an abstract way about a steam plow.
. . To be successful, it must, all things considered, plow better than
[372]
can be done with animal power . That one which shall be so
contrived as to apply the larger proportion of its power to the cutting
and turning the soil, and the smallest to the moving itself over the
field, will be the best one .. Railroad locomotives have their regular
wood and water stations. But the steam plow is less fortunate. It does
not live upon the water, and if it be once at a water station, it will work
away from it, and when it gets away cannot return without leaving its
work, at a great expense of time and strength. It will occur that a
wagon-and-horse team might be employed to supply it with fuel and
water; but this, too, is expensive; and the question recurs, 'Can the
expense be When this is added to other expenses, will not
plowing cost more than in the old
How fascinated he would have been with the tractors of
to-day!
The pressure on him from the outside was too great for
him to find time to bring the lecture to anything like a satis-
factory professional point, and he finally dropped it entirely.
He was "in the public eye"-a place ! People
sought his opinion on all sorts of public questions-the
naturalization of foreigners, the tariff. The politicians would
not let him alone--even sought to embroil him with Senator
Trumbull and with Judd, the chairman of the Republican
State Committee. The Republicans expected him to help
them in carrying out the counsel he was continually giving,
to hold together what they had built up, and, above all, to
keep the principles on which they were working uncorrupted.
Lincoln had never had any doubt but what there was
more work to be done, and that he would do his share. "An-
other blow-up is coming," he wrote Editor Ray of the Chicago
Times after the election; "we shall have fun again. Douglas
managed to be supported both as the best instrument to put
down and uphold the slave power, but no ingenuity can long
keep the antagonism in hannony." The "fun" began in a
few months. There were powerful Republicans who now, as
in the year before, were hankering after Douglas, believing
[373]
that if he could be brought into the Republican party he
would make its future secure. The most powerful of these
was Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune. He
was doing his utmost to annex Douglas. Lincoln fought it.
"The Republican principles can in nowise live with Douglas;
and it is arrant folly now, as it was last spring, to waste time
and scatter labor already performed in dallying with him,"
he told Senator Trumbull.
"Let the Republican party of Illinois dally with Judge
Douglas," he told them, "let them fall in behind him and
make him their candidate, and they do not absorb him-
he absorbs them. They would come out at the end all Doug-
las men, all claimed by him as having endorsed every one
of his doctrines upon the great subject with which the whole
nation is engaged at this hour-that the question of negro
slavery is simply a question of dollars and cents; that the
Almighty has drawn a line across the continent, on one side
of which labor-the cultivation of the soil-must always be
performed by slaves."
There was no keeping out of the fray, and by the fall
of 1859 Lincoln was in it again as hard as ever. Douglas
had been in Ohio, and made an impression. In September
Lincoln followed him, speaking in Columbus and in Cin-
cinnati. At the end of the month he was in Milwaukee, in
December in Kansas, where he spoke at least half a dozen
times. On February 27, 186o, he delivered the Cooper
Union speech, and followed it up by a tour in New England,
the actual extent of which has never been recorded in the
biographies. Only recently has there appeared a brochure
on this trip by Percy Coe Eggleston, of New London, Connec-
ticut, which shows it to be more extended than has been set
down. Between February 28, when he spoke in Providence,
Rhode Island, and March 1 o, when he spoke in Bridgeport,
[374]
Connecticut, he made nine speeches, nearly all of which were
favorably and some of them enthusiastically reported in the
New England press.
The significant features of this six months' work, coming
as it did on the top of a very energetic effort to catch up
financially, are its vigor and the extension of his range of
thinking and of research. The work was fresh, not a rehash
of the campaign with Douglas. To be sure, the backbone
of his argument was that Douglas' doctrine of popular sov-
ereignty meant the final nationalization of slavery, but he
used fresh illustrations and fresh appeals, skillfully seizing
every significant phrase or word that Douglas and others
gave him. There was what he called "the Judge's moral
climate line"-the idea developed by Douglas after election
in a tour of the South, that the Almighty had drawn a line
across the continent, on one side of which labor could only
be done by slaves. "Once we come to acknowledge," an-
swered Lincoln, "that it is the law of the Eternal Being for
slavery to exist on one side of that line, have we any sure
ground to object to slaves being held on the other side'?"
He used Senator Hammond's "mud sill" theory of labor
as pertinently. Cultivated society rested on an inferior or
slave class, Hammond was arguing at this time, "as a house
stood on mud sills." Lincoln picked up the expression and
used it in his first talk on labor and capital-the first talk
in which he shows that he had been wrestling with the eco-
nomic theory under slavery. Here we have him attacking
the idea that nobody labors unless somebody else owing
capital induces him to do it by hiring or compelling him, and
that the state of labor, hired or slave, is fixed-also that labor
is incompatible with education or free individual progress.
His treatment of this "mud sill" theory is keen, flexible,
humorous-with many pointed, satirical comments, as that "a
[375]
blind horse upon a treadmill is a perfect illustration of what
a laborer should he-all the better for bdng blind, that he
could not kick understandingly," or "a Yankee who could
invent a strong-handed man without a head would receive
the everlasting gratitude of the 'mud sill' advocates."
In Lincoln's work in this period, March, 18 59, to March,
186o, a number of ideas come to the front which his previous
speeches show had passed through his mind, but upon which
he had not enlarged. There is his conviction of the injustice
of bitter and vituperative attacks upon the Southern people.
He never could forget that the people of the South had
been born to slavery, that all their teachings and associations
had led them to accept it as a matter of course, a part of the
constitution of things, and that the North had had its part as
well as the South in perpetuating the institution in the coun-
try. In his talk to the Cincinnati people in September of
1859 there was an effort to make them feel that while he
thought slavery was wrong and must not be extended, and
they felt it was right and should be extended, yet he did not
hate or despise them, and he asked that they in turn should
not hate or despise him.
Alongside with this effort at conciliation or better under-
standing was a vigorous expression in regard to disunion.
His reply to the suggestion always bad been certain, but
never, perhaps, quite so emphatic as in one of his Kansas
speeches of this time, where he used John Brown and his tragic
fate as an illustration:
"Old John Brown thought slavery wrong, as we do; he attacked
contrary to law, and it availed him nothing before the law that he
thought himself right. He has just been hanged for tr.eason against the
State of Virginia; and we cannot object, though he agreed with us in
calling slavery wrong. Now if you undertake to destroy the Union
contrary to law, if you commit treason against the United Statts, our
[376]
duty will be to deal with you as John Brown has been dealt with. We
ahall try to do our duty."
The speech at Cooper Union on February 27, 186o,
shows best how hard Lincoln worked and how he grew in
this period. The invitation to make the speech had come
to him in the fall of 1859. He had been flattered and excited
by it. He had consented to go, and had decided to make a
political speech. Those who were with him in those days
remembered well how many hours he spent that winter in the
library of the state capitol and over Elliot's debates on the
Federal Constitution, which he owned. The best proof of
his labor is the lecture itself. The point which he set out to
demonstrate in his opening was what the fathers who framed
the government thought about slavery. He runs them down,
one after another, the thirty-nine who signed the Constitution,
and the result of his patient inquiry was proof that twenty-
three out of the thirty-nine who framed the government under
which we live were on record on the question, and that twenty-
one, "a clear majority of the whole thirty-nine," were on
record as believing that the Federal Government had the power
to control slavery in the federal territories-the point at issue
in the Dred Scott decision.
The point was so clearly and conclusively made, it was
of such importance in the argument, that it won Lincoln im-
mediate recognition in his audience of intelligent and su-
perior people as a serious student. It gave a sound historical
basis for the campaign against slavery extension that until
then had been lacking. Here was proof that the Republicans
were carrying on what the fathers had begun, that as Lincoln
argued it was not the North but the South that was the
revolutionist.
The reception of this speech certainly justified all the
care that Lincoln had taken in preparing it. Four great New
[377]
York printed it in full, and was a that
it be put in pamphlet form for circulation. Charles C. Nott,
whom in 1865 Lincoln appointed judge of the Court of
Claims, wrote him about this. N ott had gone over the speech
and suggested certain changes. Lincoln's comments on these
changes are evidence of the care with which he had prepared
the original speech, and of his sensitiveness to careless and
unauthorized statements:
"So far as it is intended merely to improve in grammar and degance
of composition, I am quite agreed ; but I do not wish the sense changed,
or modified, to a hair's breadth. And you, not having studied the par-
ticular points so closely as I have, cannot be quite sure that you do not
change the sense when you do not intend it. For instance, in a note at
bottom of first page, you propose to substitute 'Democrats' for 'Doug-
las.' But what I am saying there is true of Douglas, but is not true of
Democrats generally; so that the proposed substitution would be a very
considerable blunder. The impudently absurd I stick to. The striking
out 'he' and inserting 'we' turns the sense exactly wrong. The striking
out 'upon it' leaves the sense too general and incomplete. The sense is
'act as they acted upon that question,' not as they acted generally."
Mr. Nott and those associated with him in editing the
Cooper Union speech were anxious that there should be no
questioning of the exactness of Mr. Lincoln's historical refer-
ences. Accordingly, they asked him to give them a memo-
randa of his investigations. He wrote back that he had pre-
served no memoranda, and that to reexamine and make
notes for them would take more time than he could possibly
spare. The result was that the editors undertook the in-
vestigation themselves, and with the speech published an
appendix giving the exact references on which Mr. Lincoln
based his statements. In order to do this they declared that
they had to ransack all of the material available in the
libraries of New York, and that they consulted as well the
historians of the day-Bancroft, Hildreth, Goodell.
[378]
In their preface they said of this work that no one who had
not actually attempted to verify the details of the speech
could understand the patient research and historical labor
which Mr. Lincoln had given to it.
"The history of our earlier politics," the editors went on, "is scat-
tered through numerous journals, statutes, pamphlets, and letters; and
these are defective in completeness and accuracy of statement, and in
indices and tables of contents. Neither can any one who has not
traveled over this precise ground appreciate the accuracy of every trivial
detail, or the self-denying impartiality with which Mr. Lincoln has
turned from the testimony of 'the Fathers,' on the general question of
slavery, to present the single question which he discusses. From the
first line to the last-from his premises to his conclusion, he travels
with swift, unerring directness which no logician ever excelled-an
argument complete and full, without the affectation of learning, and
without the stiffness which usually accompanies dates and details.
A single, easy, simple sentence of plain Anglo-Saxon words contains
a chapter of history that, in some instances, has taken days of labor
to verify, and which must have cost the author months of investi-
gation to acquire. And though the public should justly estimate the
labor bestowed on the facts which are stated, they cannot estimate
the greater labor involved on those which are omitted-how many
pages have been read, how many works examined, what numerous
statutes, resolutions, speeches, letters and biographies have been looked
through. Commencing with this address as a political pamphlet, the
reader will leave it as an historical work-brief, complete, profound,
impartial, truthful-which will survive the time and the occasion that
called it forth, and be esteemed hereafter, no less for its intrinsic
worth than its unpretending modesty."
There is no question but that the look the country had at
Lincoln in the fall and winter of 1859 and 186o more than
satisfied those who were curious about him, that here was a
leader. David Locke (Petroleum V. Nasby), whose admira-
tion and respect for Lincoln was intensified by his talk with
him in Quincy at the time of the debate in 1858, heard him
at Columbus and was greatly impressed by the way that
Lincoln had, as he said, pictured the future. He believed
[379]
that he already had a glimmering of what was to come.
"Slavery," he told Locke in a talk they had after the speech,
"is doomed, and that within a few years. In discussing it
we have taught a great many thousand people to hate it who
had never given it a thought before. What kills the skunk
is the publicity it gives itself. What a skunk wants to do is
to keep snug under the barn in the daytime, when men are
around with shotguns."
Of course the impression made in New York was the
most important, for here he was touching closely some of the
chief springs of Republican action. There was William
Cullen Bryant, the editor of the Evening Post, who intro
duced him, and of whom he said to one of the committee:
"It is worth a visit from Springfield, Illinois, to New York to
make the acquaintance of such a man as William Cullen
Bryant." Then there was David Dudley Field, James W.
Nye, Horace Greeley and James A. Briggs, all of whom spoke
after the lecture, and the last of whom said, talking of whom
the Republicans should nominate for President, "One of
three gentlemen will be our standard-bearer in the presidential
contest of this year-the distinguished Senator of New York,
Mr. Seward; the late able and accomplished Governor of
Ohio, Mr. Chase; or the 'Unknown Knight' who entered the
political lists against the Bois Guilbert of Democracy on the
prairies of Illinois in 18 58, and unhorsed him-Abraham
Lincoln.''
That was a rash prophecy at the moment, and Mr. Briggs
says that after the meeting some of his friends joked him as
not being a good prophet. But that did not chill him. Two
weeks later on his return from New England, Mr. Lincoln
stopped over Sunday in New York and went to Brooklyn
to hear Mr. Beecher speak. Mr. Briggs was with him, and
called his attention to the postoffice, then a dark and dismal
[38o]
place. "I do this for a reason," he told him. "I think your
chance for being the next President is equal to that of any
man in the country. When you are President will you recom
mend an appropriation of a million dollars for a suitable
location for a postoffice in this c i t y ~
"I will make a note of that," Mr. Lincoln replied, and
later he said to Mr. Briggs, "When I was East several gentle-
men made about the same remark to me that you did to-day
about the Presidency, they thought my chances were about
equal to the best."
But he did not see much in it. He noted that it was not
Greeley, or Bryant, or George William Curtis, or Thurlow
Weed in New York City, nor Sumner, nor Wilson, nor Ham-
lin in New England that made these remarks to him. He was
not fitted for the Presidency. He wrote it and said it to more
than one. Any man that had made a dent, as he, of course,
realized he had done in a great discussion, was bound to have
his friends claiming him for the Presidency. It took more
than one swallow to make a summer, and the last thing he
proposed to do was to fool himself.
However, when he went back to Illinois he found that the
Lincoln boom, which he had left behind him a healthy if not
too large growth, had assumed state-wide proportions. It
means a lot back home to have a favorite son go for the first
time to New York City and make a speech, to be introduced
by William Cullen Bryant, and to be reported verbatim in
four metropolitan dailies. That is what had happened to
Lincoln. And he had followed it up by speeches that papers
in New England had declared the "most powerful, logical
and compact" that they had ever listened to. It was a con-
quering hero who came back from the East to Illinois in
March of 186o-a conquering hero who was most decidedly
in the hands of his friends.
[381]
XXIX
IN THE HANDS OF HIS FRIENDS
S
0 far as I know, the first mention of Abraham Lincoln
as the Republican candidate for the Presidency in 186o
was made on November 6, 1858, the week of his defeat by
Douglas-a dispatch to the Sandusky Commercial Register
from Mansfield, Ohio, saying that an enthusiastic demonstra-
tion had just been made at a mass meeting there for Lincoln
as President. Who engineered this demonstration I do not
know, though I have always supposed it to have been David R
Locke (Petroleum V. Nasby), who was the editor at or about
that time of the Mansfield Herald. Locke had just returned
from Illinois, where he had heard at least one of the debates,
that at Quincy. His impression of Mr. Lincoln I have already
quoted. He had come away deeply impressed that here was
a man of rare intellectual and moral vigor and integrity.
But it did not take an Ohioan to recognize Lincoln's
quality, as we know. One of the powerful and beautiful
effects of the honest, self-directed course which we have been
following was the impression it had made on youth. Young
men had been caught by the elevation of his thought, the lofti-
ness of his conception of our democratic scheme, and his faith
in its ultimate realization. He awakened the high-minded
youth of Illinois as no man in the State had ever done. The
distinguished Horace White, then a boy of twenty, first
heard Lincoln in 1854 when he made his great argument
against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He de
dared that the spell of that speech was upon him to the end
[382]
of his life. White had heard Webster's reply to Hayne,
but he thought Lincoln greater in his English style, and that
he excelled in "simplicity, directness and lucidity, which ap-
peal both to the intellect and the heart." This is contrary
to the judgment of those who find nothing distinguished in
his style before he was President. After that speech Horace
White had no doubt about who his leader in Illinois was to be.
utomme.rriallttgiskt

BY UENRY D. COOKE AND C. C. BILL.
SA.NDIJS.K.Y, 01110,
8.ATURDAY MORNING, NOV. G, 1858.
L
Lincoln lor re.ldent.
We are iudebted to a friead at Jlanefi.eld &or
the lollowiDg apeciai diepateb :
".M.usr.&KLD, Nov. 5Lh.l858.
}l;uaToa Su.ous.:Y RKOI8TK& :-Ail eo\buei.
aetic meetmg i1 ia progre11 hero to-nicht. ill ta-.
vor ol Lincoln for Lbe Repul:JliC&Il caadi
date for Presideo\. RnoaTaL"
FlRST ANNOUNCEMENT OF LINCOLN AS PRESIDE.NT
From Volume III of the Illinois State Historical
Library Collections, Lincoln Series.
Young men who, like Joseph Medill, had been swept off
their feet by the "lost speech" at Bloomington in May, 1856,
were from that hour wholly committed to Abraham Lincoln
as a leader. Even more radical youths, like Paul Selby, who
were engineering groups of protest before the Republican
party had crystallized in the state, were so convinced of Lin-
coln's fundamental rightness that most of them were willing
to merge their radical undertakings into any fusion of which
he should be a leader. He had made the greatest of con-
[383]
quests, the conquest of youth-made it by virtue of the sound
ness of his thinking, the sincerity of his spirit and by the im-
pression of superior wisdom that he made--made without any
pretense, simply by power of the thing itself. When it came
to the debates of 1858 this pull on young men increased.
The judgment of Lincoln's (riends, those who had known
him for years in IllinQis as a politician, a lawyer, a companion,
became increasingly serious as they watched him. Here was
a big man. And with the close of the debates, far from
dropping out of sight, the fate that Lincoln had intimated
might happen to him, his name kept coming up among the
Republicans-first as Governor, which he would not think of,
and repeatedly as a possible Illinois candidate for the
Presidency.
If the first mention of his name in the country was in
Ohio; the first in Illinois was only a few days later in the
Chicago Democrat, where a column-long editorial, headed
"Abraham Lincoln," appeared, in which it was suggested that
his name should be presented to the National Republican
Convention, first for President, next for Vice-President. "We
should then say to the United States at large that in our
opinion the Great Man of Illinois is Abraham Lincoln, and
none other than Abraham Lincoln."
So far as I know, there was no other mention of Mr. Lin
coln's name at home or abroad until in May of 1859, when
William 0. Stoddard, the editor of the Central Illinois
Gazette of Champagne, said in a discussion of "Who Shall
Be the Next :
"As for Illinois, it is the firm and fixed belief of our citizens
that for one or other of the offices in question (President or Vice
President), no man will be so sure to consolidate the party vote of
the State or will carry the great Mississippi Valley with a more
[384]
irresistible rush of popular enthusiasm as our distinguished fellow
citizen, Abraham Lincoln.
"We, in Illinois, know him well, in the best sense of the word, a
true Democrat, a man of the people, whose strongest friends and
supporters are the hard-handed and strong-limbed laboring men, who
hail him as a brother and who look upon him as one of their real
representative men. A true friend of freedom, having already done
important service for the cause, and proved his abundant ability for
still greater service; yet a staunch conservative, whose enlarged and
liberal mind descends to no narrow view, but sees both sides of every
great question, and of whom we need not fear that fanaticism on the
one side, or servility on the other will lead him to the betrayal of
any trust. We appeal to our brethren of the Republican press for
the correctness of our assertions."
I have before me a letter from Mr. Stoddard written in
18g6, in which he says:
"The 'Coming Out' leader was my own without suggestion from
anybody. I sent copies to nearly every paper in the State and to a
large number of journals all over the country. Hundreds of these
reprinted the 'editorial' in whole or in part, and scores followed in
the line of approval.
"The movement was not engineered in any way by anybody, it
was altogether spontaneous."
It was not long, however, before what Mr. Stoddard had
started became so impressive that a large group of Lincoln's
friends in Illinois-chief among them being Jesse Fell, Judge
David Davis and Leonard Swett-began seriously to discuss
the possibility of nominating him. A strong leaning toward
Lincoln began to appear in the Republican State Committee
as well as in the Republican press. One skillful manceuver
was the going of Joseph Medill, the editor of the Chicago
Tribune, to Washington to tell everybody that he could collar
there what a great man they had in Illinois-a man that could
carry doubtful states. Medill carried on his work of talking
up his candidate with energy, and finally in February of 186o
[385]
had it well enough in hand to bring out the Tribune for
Lincoln.
By this time things had gone so far that Lincoln himself
began to feel uncomfortable about what might happen to
him in Illinois. He had, he knew, a solid and devoted follow-
ing, but ever since the Republican party had been organized
he and the majority of Republicans in the state had had in
mind for the Presidency one man above all others, and that
was William H. Seward of New York. And after Seward
there was Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. These were men who
had been in the front of the battle against the extension of
slavery before Lincoln had been convinced that there must
be a struggle. He had accepted them. They had been his
leaders. Indeed, it was probably from Seward that he caught
his first definite sense that a fight was inevitable. All the
northern part of Illinois was committed to Seward he knew.
What chance had he in his own state'? Before he went to
New York for his Cooper Union speech in February he was
writing to the chairman of the Republican Committee that
though he was not in a position where it would hurt much for
him not to be named by the National Committee, it would
hurt him not to get the Illinois delegates. That is, when Lin-
coln went East he was already a candidate for the Presidency
of the United States.
That trip gave his friends more good ammunition than
they had dreamed. Indeed, there were not a few that had
doubted the advisability of his speaking in the East, fearing
that he might undo the impression that he had made in his
contest with Douglas. It was still hard for many to see in
this man whom they had known from Vandalia days on-
this man so simple in his habits, so unworldly in character
and practice-anything that would impress the dignified
Eastern group at the head of Republicanism. Lincoln better
[386]
stay at home-let well enough alone-was their feeling. But
Lincoln had gone, and he had come back with added glories.
His enthusiastic supporters at home could now show to doubt ..
ers what the papers of New York and New England had
said of him. He could have giv.en no better campaign ma
terial. to them than what he brought back. It was not only
those who were familiar with him at home that realized that
. here were the points of a great man, it was those who heard
him for the first time in the critical and cultivated East.
Lincoln's business took him at once to Chicago, for he
was then engaged on the famous "sand-bar case," which meant
so much to the city. And here he had plenty of evidence of
the importance which was attached to his candidacy. They
called for him right and left to talk, and he did yield far
enough to go out to Evanston to spend a night, a trip every
detail of which has been worked up by the Evanston Histori
cal Society and preserved in a memorial pamphlet. Here at
Evanston, just as everywhere, he left behind a memory of his
engaging personality. In an unpublished letter written me
years ago by the great temperance advocate, Frances E.
Willard, she says:
"When my brother was a theological student in the University
at Evanston (185961 ), Abraham Lincoln, prominently before the
country, came to Evanston as a guest of Gen. Julius White (the
hero of Pea Ridge Battle). Gen. White brought Lincoln to the the-
ological department, where he spoke briefly to the students, but what
impressed them-and I heard my brother tell us of it in great glee
when he came home at noon-Lincoln invited some of the students
who were walking along with him in the campus to compete in
jumping over a wall or fence. I don't remember which it was. This
they did to the best of their ability, and at the close he vaulted
over, as my brother said, 'profiting by his long legs,' and set them
all into laughter and applause by his performance."
[387]
Candidate as he was, Mr. Lincoln was not reduced to a
state where he was incapable of a clear judgment on what the
chances of other men besides himself were in the state. There
is a valuable letter to R. M. Corwine of Ohio, written early
in April, just after he came back from Chicago, which shows
this. Corwine wanted to know what Lincoln really thought
about Illinois, and he answered:
"Remembering that when not a very great man begins to be m ~ n
tioned for a very great position, his head is very likely to be a l t t l ~
turned, I concluded I am not the fittest person to answer the questions
you ask. Making due allowance for this, I think Mr. Seward is
the very best candidate we could have for the north of Illinois, and
the very worst for the south of it. The estimate of Gov. Chase
here is neither better nor worse than of Seward, except that he is
a newer man. They are regarded as being almost the same, seniority
giving Seward. the inside track. Mr. Bates, I think, would be the
best man for the south of our State, and the worst for the north
of it. If Judge McLean was fifteen, or even ten, years younger,
I think he would be stronger than either, in our State, taken as
a whole ; but his great age, and the recollection of the deaths of
Harrison and Taylor have, so far, prevented his being much spoken
of here. .
"I really believe we can carry the State for either of them, or
for any one who may be nominated, but doubtless it would be easier
to do it with some than with others.
"I feel disqualified to speak of myself in this matter."
A little later he wrote to Senator Lyman Trumbull, who
asked him to be entirely frank:
"As you request, I will be entirely frank. The taste is in my
mouth a little, and this, no doubt, disqualifies me, to some extent, to
form correct opinions. You may confidently rely, however, that by
no advice or consent of mine shall my pretentions be pressed to the
point of endangering our common cause.
"Now, as to my opinions about the chances of others in Illinois.
I think neither Seward nor Bates can carry Illinois if Douglas shall
be on the track; and that either of them can, if he shall not be. I
rather think McLean could carry it with D. on or off; in other
[388]
words, I think McLean is stronger in Illinois, taking all sections of it,
than either S. or B. ; and I think S. the weakest of the three. I
hear no objection to Mr. McLean, except his age; but that
seems to occur to every one, and it is possible it might leave him no .
stronger than the others."
These observations are entirely in line with our best
opinion of Mr. Lincoln.
Unfortunately, there is a correspondence of this period
that leaves a less pleasant feeling in the mind. It is with
a Kansas politician, one Mark Delahay, who had written him
saying evidently that he would like to go to the Chicago con-
vention as a delegate, but that he did not have money enough,
and probably intimating that if he did go he would support
Mr. Lincoln. Delahay was not a stranger to Mr. Lincoln.
He had known him when on the Circuit in earlier years-
known him as a rather gay lawyer. Delahay later had set-
tled in Kansas and had been active in the struggle against
the introduction of slavery. He had urged Mr. Lincoln to
come to Kansas to speak, and it was probably he that finally
persuaded him to do so and arranged his itinerary. It is cer-
tain that he was Delahay's guest while there. Probably feel-
ing that he was under obligations to the man, Lincoln wrote
a letter in reply to his hint for money to go to the Chicago
convention, which is the only one, I believe, of its kind in all
his published correspondence. In it he tells Delahay that he
cannot enter the ring on the money basis, first, because in the
main it is wrong, and secondly, because he has not and cannot
get the money. He goes on to say, however, that there are
certain objects in a political contest for which money is both
right and indispensable. Evidently he thinks paying the ex-
penses of a delegate to a national convention may be one of
them, for he says that he will furnish Delahay $100 to bear
the expense of the trip.
[389]
In this same letter Delahay had asked his help in his
ambition to be made one of the first senators from Kansas.
Lincoln tells him there is nothing he can do for him as he is
not personally acquainted with a single member of the legisla-
ture. As for his friendship for him, "that friendship," he
says, "was abundantly manifest by me last December In
Kansas." One of Lincoln's early appointments as President
was Delahay as surveyor general of Kansas and Nebraska.
Later he made him United States district judge for Kansas,
where he seems to have made a scandalous record. It is hard
to believe that at the time Lincoln was showing so many
favors to the man he believed him to be a corrupt politician.
He knew that he had been a staunch supporter of anti-slavery
doctrines in Karisas; if charges of corruption came to him
he probably set them down as largely due to political hostility.
It was doubtless a case where he was favoring a man that he
did not thorough! y know. The idea that he was purchasing a
vote at the Chicago convention is of course absurd. As a
matter of fact, the Kansas delegates were instructed for
Seward, and Lincoln advised Delahay when he knew this:
"Don't stir them up to anger, but come along to the conven-
tion and I will do as I said about expenses."
The Illinois Republicans did not get around to choose
their candidate for President until the 1oth of May, less than
a fortnight before the National Convention was held. Why
Decatur was chosen for that convention I do not know, but
there is a certain satisfaction in having it so. Decatur, as we
know,. was where Lincoln had first landed when he came into
Illinois, and two or three times a year at least, after he was
admitted to the bar, he had spent more or less time in the
town. In scores of ways he was bound to its people, so that
when the convention met there in May, 186o, he knew that he
was going among friends; but he knew well enough, too, that
[390]
he was not going to a unanimous convention. There was a
strong group of Seward men in the body and a few supporters
of Bates. For instance, one of his oldest friends, 0. H.
ing, with whose family Lincoln had been intimate since the
early days in Vandalia, was doubtful of the wisdom of nomi-
nating Lincoln, and much preferred that Bates should be the
candidate. It is interesting to recall that when the delegates
to the Chicago convention were being named at Decatur and
s name was up, Richard Oglesby urged Lincoln to
disapprove of it. He refused. He knew all about Browning,
he said, and it would be a good deal safer for him to be in
Chicago with the delegation, where they could keep an eye on
him, than working on the outside.
There is no doubt that Lincoln was at the con-
vention, as he had been from the start, by the thought of what
seemed to him his unfitness as compared with that of Gover-
nor Seward. We have more than one proof of this feeling.
It was in his mind as he watched the struggle between his
own friends and those of Seward. At one point the debate
grew hot to the point of an exchange of unpleasant epithets
between the speakers. Lincoln sat crouching at one side, a
picture of humiliation and despair .
. There probably was no serious question in Lincoln's or
his followers' minds but that the convention would select him,
but no one could have foreseen the enthusiasm with which it
was done. This was due to the vent that was given to pent-
up emotions by the introduction of a banner mounted on two
old fence rails, announcing as
THE RAIL CANDIDATE
FOR PRESIDENT IN 186o.
The rails, so the legend below the headlines ran, were from
"a lot of 3,000 split in 1830 by John Hanks"- . he carried
[391]
the banner-"and Abe Lincoln, whose father was the first
pioneer of Macon County." (The legend was wrong in this
statement-there were several settlers in Macon County
ahead of Thomas Lincoln.)
Probably never in the political history of this country has
there been anything picked up more quickly as a fitting cam-
paign cry than those rails, unless perhaps the log cabin in the
days of Harrison. Here was something typifying a stage in
the development of the man, most precious to the great mass
of self-made Americans. He knew what labor meant, for
they all knew that cutting rails was real labor. There began
that day at Decatur, when John Hanks marched into the hall
with the rail that Abe made, an outburst of pioneer enthusiasm
which has never been equalled in the country. Slogans,
campaign signs, cartoons from now on used the rail as a party
symbol.
What had happened at Decatur no doubt encouraged Mr.
Lincoln that he had a chance at Chicago. One of the young
men who was in his office at that time says that he had begun
to build White House castles for Lincoln after the Cooper
Union speech, but he would only laugh indulgently when he
talked to him and say, "John, I haven't a chance in a hun-
dred." But things moved fast now. John did not give up the
idea, even prepared a speech which he expected to have a
chance to deliver in case Mr. Lincoln was nominated. He
asked Mr. Lincoln to hear it, but for a long time he declined.
Then one afternoon, coming into the office, he said, "Well,
John, I think I feel strong enough this afternoon to stand that
speech.''
One of the cleverest manreuvers of Lincoln's supporters
was securing the convention for Chicago. It gave outsiders
a chance to see what Illinois thought of her candidate, how
they were willing to work for him. Held anywhere else it
[392]
would have been practically impossible to have had on the
ground a large group of men pledged to Lincoln's support,
nor would it have been possible for them to have worked with
the same self-assurance that they did in Chicago.
Simmered down, we can say that Lincoln's nomination
for the Presidency in Chicago on May 19, 186o, was due,
first, to William H. Seward's enemies, and, second, to his
own friends. The honor of engineering the extraordinary
effort necessary to convince a majority of the delegates, first
that Seward could not be elected in Pennsylvania, Indiana,
Illinois and New Jersey, and secondly, that Abraham Lincoln
could, belongs to Judge David Davis, on whose circuit Lincoln
had long traveled and whose personal devotion to the man
exceeded even his political conviction that he was the best
candidate. In a letter written me some years ago by Judge
John M. Scott, of Bloomington, I find this judgment on Davis'
Chicago work, and I think those who have studied the oper-
ations of the convention closest, will agree that it is a sound
judgment:
"It is the belief of many that that which did more than any one
thing else to force the nomination of Mr. Lincoln after the assembling
of the convention was the personal power and influence of Judge
David Davis, and without which it is not thought he would have
received the nomination. Judge a v i ~ possessed unusual power and
ability to control a body of men by forming combinations and other-
wise, but most of all by the force of his personal character. He
was present with the coming of the first members of the convention,
and from that time on he was among them-in the day and in the
night-entreating and persuading delegates as few men had the ability
to do. The cause of his friend was more to him than it would have
been had it been personal to himself. He rested not in the great work
from the time it commenced until the hour of triumph came. By nature
he was vehement and forceful, but when aroused by an intense purpose
he wielded an influence few men could withstand. This overcame
when entreaty and persuasion failed."
[393]
To scores of the ablest men in the country Illinois' victory
was a tragedy-a tragedy because it was Seward's defeat. In
their judgment the nomination was due him not only because
he had been so long the leader of the cause, but because of
his experience, his training, his proved ability in public affairs.
His rejection seemed a calamity to them. In the
demonstration that followed Lincoln's selection the distress
of Seward's supporters impressed even the boys in the crowd,
as in the following story of the convention by W. T. Norton,
of AI ton, Illinois:
"I was then in school at Lake Forest. In company with my
roommate, I came down to witness the great convention on the last
day of its session. We got up at 5 o'clock in the morning, went down
to the wigwam and planted ourselves against the main doorway.
There we waited until the doors were opened at 9 o'clock. The
rush of the crowd carried us down into the pit, clear to the delegates'
platform. Boy-like, we climbed upon the edge of the platform, and
no one had a better view of the proceedings than ourselves. I remember
the roll call of states for the presidential nomination, and .the response
of the partisans of Lincoln, Seward, Chase, Cameron, Bates, as they
were successively placed in nomination. It was at once noticeable,
judging from the volume of the applause each candidate's name
evoked, that, whatever the preference of the delegates, the spectators
were overwhelmingly with Lincoln, with Seward's followers next in
strength. Not only was the vast crowd inside for Lincoln, but the
masses swarming outside were likewise cheering wildly for the man
from Illinois. The clamor for Lincoln was not only enthusiastic, but
insistent. Doubtless it had its effect on the delegates.
"Had the convention been held elsewhere than in Chicago, Seward,
then the national leader of the new party, would doubtless have
been nominated, but the crowd in the convention hall, and the sup
porters outside who echoed their shouts, were for Lincoln and would
not be denied. Was this the prophetic instinct of 'coming events
casting their shadows before' 'I The enthusiasm in the wigwam as the
balloting progressed and the successive results were announced is
indescribable, but the scene itself is indelibly inscribed on my memory.
I have seen many great assemblies since, and varied national con-
ventions, but never one like this, when the new party of freedom, in
[394]
its stalwart youth was choosing its leader with the foresight of those
guided by inspiration. Of the speeches I recall but two which im
pressed me especially. One was that of Norman B. Judd, chairman
of the Illinois delegation, in placing Lincoln in nomination. The other
was that of William F. Evarts of the New York delegation who,
after what seemed long delay, and in response to persistent calls of
'New York! New York !' rose to accede to the will of the majority
as expressed on the third ballot. It was a bitter pill for Evarts and
the entire New York delegation, whose idol had fallen. They were
blindly devoted to Seward, and had moved their hosts to Chicago in
full confidence of victory.
"I recall Evarts as he rose to speak-tall, straight, and spare of
figure, with tears of disappointment coursing down his high-bred face.
But he was a patriot and a statesman as well as a partisan, and made
a wonderful speech in giving the adhesion of the Empire State
to the new leader, who had come out of the West. I do not remember
what he said, only the effect and the impression, and that he captured
the crowd and the convention.
"After the last change of the vote of some state-1 think Penn
sylvania-on the final ballot had assured the nomination of Lincoln,
pandemonium broke loose. The people had had their way. How
they shouted and yelled and cheered, again and again, keeping up
the din for a half hour! It seemed as if the roof of the building
would be lifted up by the volume of cheers and the sides fall out to
give them room. Outside a salute was being fired, but the boom
of the cannon was drowned in the wild hurrahs of the people. I
could see the smoke drift past the windows, but heard no report."
Mr. Norton's theory that noise nominated Lincoln is
often met. It is not flattering to the convention. Carl Schurz,
who was a delegate from Wisconsin and followed Seward
to the end, has this to say :
nMuch has been said about the superior volume and fierceness of
the shouting for Lincoln in the packed galleries and its effect upon
the minds of the delegates. But that is mere reporters' talk. The
historic fact is that as the convention would not take the risks
involved in the nomination of Seward, it had no other alternative
than to select Lincoln as the man who satisfied the demands of the
earnest anti-slavery men without subjecting the party to the risks
thought to be inseparable from the nomination of Seward. That the
[395]
popular demonstrations for Lincoln in and around the convention
were indeed well planned and organized is true, but they were by
no means a decisive factor, without them the result would have been
the same."
Everything that happened at the Chicago convention was
told and retold to Lincoln of course by the jubilant group
of friends that had fought for him. Nobody would have en-
joyed more the episodes of that strenuous week than he. And
nothing could have given him a better idea of what they had
gone through for him than the condition in which one of the
most dignified of the delegates returned to Springfield. This
was Judge Stephen T. Logan. (It might have been anybody
else!) Mr. Henry T. Rankin describes the judge's appearance
before and after the convention.
"He had gone there," says Mr. Rankin, "to head the Illinois dele
gation, clad in the finest new suit he had ever worn, and his head
crowned with a tall new shining silk hat, the best that our Spring
field 'Adams, Hatter,' had ever made. He came back with his
suit a sight to behold, dusty, and wrinkled beyond all recognition,
for he had not been out of it since he had left Springfield. He came
back wearing a little Scotch cap, the glossy tall silk hat having
been left somewhere in the debris of the wigwam, near Lake Michigan,
after Logan had beaten it into shapeless ruin over the heads and
shoulders of his fellow-delegates upon announcement of the third
ballot. No one would credit this report at first, but everybody who
had been there said it was true-except the judge. And he was silent."
Mr. Rankin further tells of the meeting between his own
father and Judge Logan. '"Rankin" '-he said it in a whis ..
per for he had shouted away all the voice he had in Chicago--
, "I am even with Lincoln now. He made me drop him and
vote for Trumbull for United States Senator in 1856, to keep
Matteson out. I cried then like a baby with vexation and
wrath. Now I've had my revenge. He will be President,"
and the two gray Kentuckians-old Whig veterans of the
[396]
Henry Clay campaigns--clasped each other, crying for joy
like children."
In that picture we have the second biggest factor in the
first nomination of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency-
the first being the opposition to Seward.
[397]
XXX
AWAITING THE VEllDICT
A
T ALKING Presidential nominee is often his own worst
enemy. The more excited the public, the sharper the
division of opinion, the more damage he does himself and his
party every time he opens his mouth or writes a letter. To
be sure, we have candidates who must talk, never having said
anything before nomination. Abraham Lincoln was not in
this class. He had something to show-the soundest thinking,
the most complete as well as the clearest statement of the
subject that divided the country-the extension of slavery-
made by any man in the long conflict. For six years he had
given at least . half of his conscious and probably all of his
unconscious mind to developing his arguments. No national
campaign committee ever had a more dignified and con-
vincing body of material to send out than that which Lincoln
provided the Republicans. And they made the most of it.
Editions of his speeches, particularly of the seven debates
with Douglas and the Cooper Union speech, were published
in New York, Ohio and Chicago by different agencies, and
spread liberally over the country.
Lincoln now took the position that he had said repeatedly
all he had to say on the subject. He may have had some
idea that everybody knew what he thought, but he must have
been soon dissuaded, for after his nomination there descended
upon him from North and South crowds of visitors and
floods of letters, asking his opinions, begging him to come
and tell them what his policy would be if elected, or to put
[398]
A WAITING THE VERDICT
it down in a letter so that they might show it to their friends.
It was the discouraging experience that every public man
suffers when, after having spent himself for years in expound-
ing his views, he suddenly faces the fact that, after all, only
a handful of people have listened to him and only a few of
them understand what he has been saying.
Lincoln was lucky, however, in having these books and
pamphlets at hand to turn over to those of his correspondents
and visitors who seemed to him serious enough to really
absorb the content of his argument. Copy after copy of the
thin, black-covered book containing the debates with Douglas,
published in 186o in Columbus, Ohio, has been turning up
from that day to this, bearing the inscription, "A-B-
From A. Lincoln," on its title page. But there were not
books and pamphlets enough to give to everybody, nor did
everybody seem worthy of them, so that Mr. Lincoln finally
instructed his new secretary, John G. Nicolay, to prepare a
circular letter to fit the case. It is entirely Lincolnesque in
terms: He had received many letters asking for his opinions,
he said, but he had also received a greater number beseeching
him to say nothing whatever on any point of political doctrine.
His position, this second class of letters declared, was well
known when he was nominated, and he must not embarrass
the canvass by undertaking to shift or modify it, and that
was his judgment and decision. Hundreds of copies of this
letter probably went out.
All this did not prevent his answering many corre-
spondents, particularly those from the South, with painstak-
ing personal letters. Would he not write something dis-
claiming all intention to interfere with slavery in the s t t e s ~
they asked him. "It would do no good," he would answer.
"I have already done this many, many times, and it is in
print and open to all who will read. Those who will not
[399]
read or heed what I have already publicly said would not
read or heed a repetition of it. 'If they hear not Moses and
the prophets neither will they be persuaded though one rose
from the dead.'"
FACSIMILE OF A DEFINITION OF DEMOCRACY WRITIEN AND SIGNED BY LINCOLN
FOR MRS. BRADWELL, WIFE OF HIS FRIEND JUDGE J. B. BRADWELL.
They wanted his "conservative views."
"If I were to labor a month," he answered, "I could not express
my conservative views and intentions more clearly and strongly than
they are expressed in our platform and in my many speeches already
printed and before the public, . yet . I have not decided that
I will not do substantially what you suggest. I will not forbear from
doing so merely on punctilio and pluck. If I do finally abstain, it will
be because of apprehension that it would do harm. For the good men
of the South-and I regard the majority of them as such-1 have no
objection to repeat seventy and seven times. But I have bad men to
deal with, both North and South ; men who are eager for something
new upon which to base new misrepresentations; men who would like
to frighten me, or at least fix upon me the character of timidity and
cowardice. They would seize upon almost any letter I could write as
being an 'awful coming down.' I intend keeping my eye upon these
gentlemen, and to not unnecessarily put any weapons in their hands."
[400]
AWAITING THE VERDICT
Of course he was right in thinking that any expression
that came from him now would be maliciously twisted and
turned. Misrepresentation, ridicule, willful lying are recog-
nized tools in politican campaigns. The more acute the
division of opinion the more freely they are employed. Good
men go yearly into office in these United States hampered by
suspicion and false judgments born of the reckless indifference
to the truth which so often characterizes our political cam-
paigns. They are handicapped from the start in their best
efforts. We have it always with us, but our history affords
no more flagrant example than what happe1;1ed now to Abra-
ham Lincoln. We are far enough away from his nomination
-public opinion upon the man's worth is too well grounded
for us not to read with shocked indignation the characteriza-
tions that were freely circulated and freely accepted by those
who opposed his doctrines.
"He was a vulgar village politician," one great metro-
politan daily declared; "a fourth-rate lawyer." The Cooper
Union speech, which Horace Greeley, who heard it and who
at the moment was not too friendly to Lincoln, declared to
be the very best political address to which he had ever listened,
and he added, "I have heard some of Webster's greatest," his
opponents now sneered at as "hackneyed," "illiterate," "un-
mitigated trash interlarded with coarse clumsy jokes." This,
of course, was angry, uncontrolled partisan expression,
intended to besmirch and belittle Lincoln. It had no relation
to fact nor was it intended to have.
Mischievous and misleading accusations began to spread
-he had belonged to the Know Nothing or American party
-had been seen going into Know Nothing lodges. So wide-
spread and serious was the charge that he had to deny it to
individuals. ''I suppose," he wrote one gentleman, "that as
good or even better men than I may have been in Know
[401]
Nothing lodges, but, in point of fact, I never was in one.
And now a word of caution. Our adversaries think they can
gain a point if they can force me to openly deny the charge
by which some degree of offense would be given to the
Americans. For this reason it must not publicly appear that
I am paying any attention to the charge."
They tried to stir up trouble for him in Kentucky. San;1uel
Haycraft, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky-we met this gentle-
man in an earlier chapter-wrote asking if it would not be a
pleasure for him to visit his old home. "Indeed it would be,"
Lincoln replied, "but would it be safe'? Would not the
people lynch me'?" He meant it to be jocular, and told the
story to friends. It was not long before it was spread over
the country that Mr. Lincoln said that a trap had been set
to inveigle him into Kentucky in order to do violence to him.
He was distressed, particularly on Mr. Haycraft's account.
It took much explaining to be sure he was set right in his
old neighbor's mind, as well as cautioning to see that he did
not make matters worse by his explaining.
Forged extracts, pretending to be from old speeches of
his were circulated. An outrageous one which particularly
incensed him characterized Jefferson as a man of "repulsive
character, continually puling about "liberty, equality and the
degrading curse of slavery, yet he brought his own children
to the hammer and made money by his debaucheries. Even
at his death he did not manumit his numerous offspring, but
left them still a prey to degradation and the cart whip." A
nasty bit for a man as decent in thought and as careful of his
facts as Mr. Lincoln to see passed from newspaper to news-
paper. He could do nothing more than to tell those who sent
the clippings to him, asking an explanation, that he never
said anything like it at any time or place.
A forgery of this sort, once it is set on its lawless round
[402]
of the press, however out of character with the man to whom
it is credited, is hard to kill. This dishonest practice of
putting into Lincoln's mouth for political purposes words that
h,e never spoke still goes on. In the present year there was
spread through the press of the country an alleged quotation
from Lincoln, beginning, "I see a dark cloud on the horizon,
and that dark cloud is coming from Rome," followed by a
prophecy of a disastrous struggle with "Rome and her allies."
The quotation was a clumsy fabrication.
For many years there has cropped up at intervals a forged
quotation pretending to give his views on prohibition. It is
often backed up with what looks like documentary evidence.
Mr. Lincoln, it is claimed, said in a speech in the Illinois
House of Representatives in December, 1840, when an act
to regulate tavern and grocery licenses was under discussion:
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It
is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the
bounds of reason. in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by
legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A pro
hibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our
government was founded."
But the Journal of the House shows no such remarks.
The only recorded connection of Lincoln with the bill was
moving that the following amendment be laid on the table:
"That after the passage of this act no person shall be licensed to
sell vinous or spirituous liquors in this state, and that any person who
violates this act by selling such liquors shall be fined the sum of
$1,000, to be recovered before any court having competent jurisdiction."
This was done by a vote of 7 5 to 8.
Years ago I had a careful search made in the House
Journal and in the Springfield newspapers of the period for
this quotation, but without result. When it cropped up again
this year with a cunning use of documentary references, I
[403]
wrote to the Illinois State Historical Library, asking if' any
proof of the authenticity of the quotation had been recently
discovered; this was my reply:
"We have had hundreds of letters in regard to this from all over
the United States, and also from England. This statement cannot be
found in any of the public writings or speeches of Lincoln, and t here-
with enclose to you the extract from the House Journal of December
19, 1840-41, page 136, entitled 'An Act to amend an Act,' etc.
"There were no speeches made on the subject. The files of the
Springfield newspapers covering that period have been gone over very
carefully time and time again ~ both the people in favor of prohibi-
tion and those against it, and they have failed to find that Mr. Lincoln
ever made such a statement, so I do not know where they could go to
verify it "
Throughout this period that we are now following, from
Lincoln's nomination in May to his election in November, he
lived in an atmosphere of caricaturing, misrepresentation,
intriguing and lying, which became darker and thicker as
public feeling on the slavery question became more intense
and angry. One of the tests of a man's fitness for public
office is the control, the humor, and the discretion with which
he meets this deplorable but inevitable feature of public life.
Lincoln had had experience enough with the meanness of
men to know something of what he was in for, and the general
good temper, quiet and cleverness with which he handled
these partisan attacks augured w-ell for the future; he must
have realized that what was happening to him now was
but an insignificant sample of what would come in the near
future unless the public excitement could be allayed.
This unpleasant side of his experience as a nominee was,
after all, but an episode. He was too busy from morning
until night receiving in the Governor's room at the state
capitol, which had been hospitably turned over to him as a
reception office, men and women from one end of the country
[404]
to the other, hordes of them merely friendly and curious,
but numbers politically significant.
Judge David Davis and Leonard Swett, who had been
his most important backers in Chicago, went East soon after
the nomination urging men important in the Republican
organization-most of them men who had been bitterly dis-
appointed by the result at Chicago, who knew little of Lincoln
other than his opinions, and who doubted his political wisdom
and executive ability-to come to Springfield. Conspicuous
among the visitors thus secured was Thurlow Weed, the
editor of the Albany Argus, the friend and backer of Seward,
the enemy of Horace Greeley-an enmity returned with
interest. Weed had been so overwhelmed by the defeat that
all he wanted was to get far away and forget the whole cam-
paign, but Davis and Swett persuaded him to visit Lincoln
in Springfield, and he finally carne-to go away, as many
another man was doing now, with. the conviction that here
was a sagacious, frank, self-directed man that would have
to be dealt with intelligently and honestly.
Practically everybody of understanding and good will
that carne went away reconciled. One of the finest of recent
contributions to this getting acquainted with Mr. Lincoln
after the nomination, comes in a letter of Carl Schurz to his
wife, for here you find another Seward man, of very different
type of mind and training from Weed, well satisfied. His
letter gives the best picture that we have, I think, of the
simplicity and naturalness of Mr. Lincoln's horne and public
life at this period :
"I was with Lincoln yesterday," Mr. Schurz writes Mrs. Schurz
under date of July 25, 186o. "He is the same kindly old fellow, quite
as unpretentious and ingenuous as ever. The reception committee had
reserved quarters for me at the hotel, and Lincoln was one of the first
to knock at my door. He wears a linen sackcoat and a hat of doubtful
[405]
age, but his appearance is neat and cleanly. We talked in my room
nearly two hours. I was lying on my bed resting, when he came, and
he insisted on my remaining so. He talked of the presidential election
with as much placid, cheerful frankness as if we were discussing the
potato crop .. In the evening I took supper with Lincoln. The
Madam was very nicely dressed up, and is already quite skillful in
handling her fan. She chats fairly well, and will adapt herself to the
White House cleverly enough. Lincoln's boys are typical Western
youngsters. One of them insisted on going about barefooted. After
supper, to which a number of 'leading men' had been invited, we lit
our cigars and chatted. At eight o'clock the Wideawakes came to
escort me to my mass meeting in the capitol. I have never seen so large
a torchlight procession. Lincoln insisted on accompanying us, although
. he had not appeared in public since his nomination. He declared that
he must once hear 'that tremendous speaker.' And so the Wideawakes
surrounded 'Old Abe' and me; thus arm in arm we marched to the
capitol."
Such a visit as Schurz's must have been a great delight to
Mr. Lincoln. And then in scores of ways he was receiving
proofs of personal friendship, always so dear to him. Among
the recently published letters of this period is one from a boy-
hood friend, Nathaniel N. whose brother Aaron
had married Lincoln's sister. Grigsby was now living in
Missouri, and he evidently had announced to Lincoln his
intention of voting for him. Lincoln's reply shows him more
interested in giving the news of his own family than he is in
the possibility of a vote, for, after telling him various bits of
family history, he adds that Grigsby can vote for him if his
neighbors will let him, but he would advise him not to get
into trouble about it.
Other friends from southwestern Indiana as well as from
Kentucky wrote him. Lincolns from different parts of the
country tried to discover if there was any relationship between
them. All this personal side he enjoyed. Then, too, he took
real satisfaction in the way the elections were going. He
watched every state, almost every precinct, like a hawk, and
[4o6]
PoRTRAIT oF ABRAHAM LINCOLN MADE JusT BEFORE HE LEFT SPRINGFIELD, ILL., FOR
HIS INAUGURATION AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
This is one of the first pictures showing Lincoln with a beard. The original
negative is owned by H. W. Fay, custodian of the Lincoln Tomb
in this period vastly extended his knowledge of the personnel
of the Republican party. He learned not merely the names,
but something of the abilities and character of state, as well
as of local leaders. This, of course, was an extending into
the nation his old political practice of mapping out the area
in which a political struggle was on and learning the actors
to the last man.
We have had evidence enough already of the way in which
Lincoln went through the minds of men with whom he talked.
He put his habit to good use now. These scores upon scores
of politicians who wrote him or visited him in person, under-
went a more or less unconscious scrutiny and appraisement
of which they could have had no knowledge. He found out
whom they hated or suspected, and balanced it by more or
less knowledge of those who hated or suspected them, for it
was not only misrepresentation of himself that he was obliged
to meet, it was misrepresentation of the factions in the party.
He had a busy time trying to pull together these divisions.
When it was known, for instance, that Thurlow Weed had
visited him, he was bombarded with warnings against Weed.
It was taken as a certainty that Weed was intriguing, and
. he had to write and say to more than one that he "saw no
signs whatever of the intriguing, that he had asked for
nothing." His general attitude toward those who gave him
what he called "historical details of local troubles" was that
he had not heard so much upon the subject as they had
supposed, that he was slow to listen to incriminations among
friends, and that "his sincere wish was that both sides and
everybody would let bygones be bygones and look to the
present and future only."
Fortunately for Lincoln and for the Republican interest
there were great bodies of men in all the northern states who
sensed as deeply as he did this necessity of letting bygones be
[407]
bygones. It was a question now not of men; but of the very
fundamentals of human liberty. Happily enough he had
evidence in his own circle of the working of this superior
sense. For more than ten years now he had been estranged
from a friend to whom he had once been deeply attached,
Cyrus Edwards, who felt that in 1849 Lincoln had not played
fair in regard to the General Land Office. No explanation
of Mr. Lincoln's had ever softened Edwards' feeling of in-
justice; but now, with the future of the country at stake, he
put his old grievance behind him and wrote to Joseph Gillespie
-the friend of them both-that he pledged "a word which
has never failed that he would bury the hatchet with Lincoln."
The political strength of the Republicans in the campaign
of 186o lay in the division of the Democrats. There were
three tickets in the field, and so long as these three tickets
or ariy two of them could be kept from fusing, Republican
success was a practical certainty. Lincoln, watched, catlike,
every move on the part of Douglas to manage his competitors
to his own advantage. He warned on all sides when he saw
a sign of weakness, but there are no evidences in his letters
that he ever had serious anxiety about the result. The
Republicans grew not only in numbers, but in determination
and in enthusiasm as the weeks went on. Lincoln's name was
on their lips, but the fervor of a great idea was stirring their
souls. They were swept by something of the same depth
of feeling, the same largeness of view that had been driving
Lincoln himself. Sitting there in Springfield through these
weeks waiting for the election, Lincoln must have felt at
times almost dismay at the tremendous thing which was
sweeping through the North and West, of which he in all
probability soon would be the leader, which he must hold
together, put to use. It was at the moment so much greater
than any man, and yet it was something a man might wreck
[4o8]
by stupidity, vanity, obstinacy. At the same time it must
have been heartening to see his long faith in the fundamental
unsoundness of the thing which he had been fighting, demon-
strated as it was. The opposition was crumbling daily. But
there was tragedy in the disunion. Numbers of his opponents,
feeling defeat in the air, did not hesitate to declare that they
would shake the dust of the Union off their feet if the Re-
publicans were victorious. The threat came to Lincoln often
and more often as the election approached. He dismissed it
in words which sound strangely to-day-sound as if he had
never up to that time seriously considered the idea of secession.
One visitor who came to him reports him as saying that there
was no real disunionism in the country, and to a correspondent
he wrote, "The people of the South have too much good sense
and good temper to attempt the ruin of the government, at
least so I hope and believe." It was treating as impossible
a fearful possibility which he had more than once recognized
in the past years and resolutely declared would be met by
resistance if it eventuated. "We won't get out of the Union,
and you shan't," he had said in 1856. Again and again
similar declarations are found in his speeches.
A very good idea of the seriousness of the attention he
had already given to the threat is found in a letter to Alex-
ander Stephens, of Atlanta, Georgia, written four months
before his nomination-a remarkable letter, only in the last
few years given to the public, the longest letter that he ever
wrote, he declared. In it he gives the historical basis for his
belief that there was no legal way for a state to withdraw
from the Union, that secession was revolution, and must be
treated as revolution. It is probable that the tnaterial for
this document was collected at the time he was ransacking the
records to discover what the fathers of the country thought
about the right of Congress to keep slavery out of the terri-
[409]
tories-the investigation which gave weight and importance
to the Cooper Union speech.
Lightly as Lincoln tried to treat the' threat of disunion
in this period, there is evidence enough that he had sensed
the possibility of the attempt ever since 1854, and that he
was clear in his mind how it should be met. But now he must
quiet alarms-ignore dangers. This was the policy of the
Republicans-Seward, Schurz and Bryant were all character-
izing the threats of disunion as largely political-an attempt
of the opposing parties to persuade the public that Lincoln's
selection was bound to drive the South into secession. And
Lincoln sitting idle in Springfield must not embarrass those
who were fighting the battle in the field.
His judgment of the result of the campaign was justified
in November-victory, but a victory that had its sting. One
million, eight hundred sixty-six thousand, four hundred and
fifty-two men had ~ s t their votes for him, but over two and
three-quarter millions had cast their votes for others. The
weakness of this majority was that it was divided between
three candidates, the most popular of whom was Stephen A.
Douglas. Lincoln had nearly half a million votes more than
Douglas. The startling feature in his election was the
sectional division of the country it showed. In ten adjoining
states Lincoln had not a single vote, and in fifteen states he
had no electoral vote. The Union was politically if not
physically divided.
But Lincoln was not thinking overmuch of future perils
as, alone with the operators, he received the returns of the
election in the Springfield telegraph office, the night of
November 6, 186o. His mind was busy with his future work
-first of all his Cabinet.
The great-great-great-great-grandson of Samuel Lincoln
who, two hundred and twenty-three years before had come
[410]
A WAITING THE VERDICT
from old England to settle on the coast of
had his mind on his task, in this moment of triumph and
power even as all the long line of toilers who had preceded.
him, at every crisis of their lives. It was their daring and
their endurance that were in his veins and had brought him
where he was and now in victory he did as they would have
done, kept his hand on his plough.
THE END
[411}
INDEX
A
Abolitionists, 271, 323, 325, 327, 333,
338, 339, 343, 344, 358, 359, 363
Adams, W. F., 132
Allen, Dr. John, 172, 220
American party.-See Know Nothing
party
Amish people, 44
Anderson, Robert, 186
Anti-Nebraska party.-Stt Republican
party
Arnold, Isaac N., 311
B
Bradwell, J. B., 400
Branson, William, 35
Breckinridge, Judge, 149
Briggs, James A., 380
Brooks, Senator, 332
Brown, John, 376, 377
Brown, Capt. J. N., 360
Browning, 0. W., 325, 333, 391
Bryant, William Cullen, 380. 381,
410
Buchanan, President, 348
c
"Cabin, Lincoln's," 63
Calhoun, John, 19 s, 279
Cameron, Rev. John, 172, 194
"Career of a Country Lawyer," 231,
Baker, Edward D., 265-267
Barry, John, 99, ro6, 116
Barton, Rev. William E., 74, 76, 83, 302
87, 88, 106, 294t 298
Bates, Edward, 274
Beall, A. L., 270
Bebb, Governor, 275
Beecher, Henry Ward, 380
Benton, F. H., 275
Benton, Thomas, 284
Berry, Richard, 72, 75, 89
Berry & Lincoln, r88-190
Bissell, Colonel, 333
Blackburn, Joe, 311
Black Hawk War, I8r-185
"Bleeding Kansas," 332, 334
Bloomington speech.-See
Anti-Nebraskan
"Book of Sports," s
Boone, Ann, 3 9, 40
Boone, Daniel, 38, 57, 6o
Boone, George, 38, 45
Boone, Ratliff, 150
Borden, Benjamin, 45
Bowne, John, 32, 33, 34
Bowne, Obadiah, 33
Bradford, Governor, 20
Carr, Clark, 356
Cartwright, Peter, 270-271, 272
Cass, Lewis, 183, 275
Chandler, Dr. Charles, 200
Channing, William Ellery, 297
Chase, Salmon P., 285, 335, 380, 385
CircYit riders, 301-320
Civil War, 49, 344
Clary Grove boys, 173-174, 189
Clay, Henry, 261, 272, 275, 279, 292,
323, 397
Clayton, John, 296
Cleveland, Grover, 317
Speech, Coles, Edward, 147-148, 205, 232
Congress, Thirtieth, 283
Convention, first Illinois state Repub-
lican, 333
Convention, Republican National, 384,
390
Convention system, 265-266
Cooper Union speech, 377-379, 385,
392, 398, 491, 410
Corwin, Tom, 275
Corwine, R. M., 388
[413]
INDEX
Crawford, Elizabeth, 132
Crawford, Josiah, 132, 133, 140, 141
Cunningham, J. B., 329, 330
Curtis, George William, 381
Cushing, Daniel, 6
D
Davis, David, 365, 385, 393, 405
Davis, John, 155J56, 239
Davis, J. McCan, 177, 246, 360
Debates, Lincoln-Douglas, 190, 353-
367, 372, 399
Delahay, 389-390
Diller, Roland W., 194
"Doomsday Book," 18
Douglu, Stephen A., 197, 243, 275,
280, 318, 323, 347-355, 367, 373, 378,
381, 385, 408, 410
Dred Scott decision, 346, 347, 361,
377
Dresser, Rev. Charles, 253-254
Dunkards, 44
Duvall, William P., 91
E
"Early Life of Lincoln," 202
"Early Reminiscences of Alton," 299
Edwards, Mrs. B. F., 237
Edwards, Cyrus, 295, 408
Edwards, Elizabeth Todd, 243
Edwards, Ninian, :zos
Ellsworth, W. E., 141
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 317, 371
Endicott, John, 19
Enlow, Abraham, 93, 94
Ephrata Cloister, 44
Evanston Historical Society, 387
Evarts, William M., 395
F
Fay, H. W., 160
Fell, Jesse, 297, 365, 385
Fell, V., 297
Field, David Dudley,
380
Fifer, Judge, 365
Filson Club, 63, 64
Filson, John, 102
Free Soilera, aSs, a86, 287, 327, 332,
333
Fremont, John C., 333, 338
Fugitive Slave Law, a6o, 321, 3U
G
Gallagher, Austin, 103, 104
Gilbert, Felix, 47-48
Gillespie, Joseph, 408
Globe Tavern, 251, 252, 253
Graham, Christopher Columbus,
103, 104, 109, 112
1()2
Graham, Mentor, 172, 176, 18o, 214,
261
Greeley, Horace, 275, 276, 349, 374-t
380, 381, 401, 405
Green, Bowling, 173, 175, 220
Grigsby, Nancy, 143
Grigsby, Nathaniel, 406
H
Hamand, Jane, 177, au, 215
Hammond, Senator, 375
Hanks, Benjamin, 22
Hanks, Dennis, 84-87, 123, 129
Hanks, Joseph, 73, So-83, u6, x64
Hanks, Lucy, 84, 8 5, 86
Hanks, Nancy, 22, 71, . 711, 75, 77, 78-
89, 96100
1
102
1
123-127
Hanks, William, 164
Hardin, Ben, 91
Hardin, John J., 266-269, 272, 273
Harding, George, 315, 316
Hardy, W. F., 301, 302
Harrison, President William Henry,
392
Hauberg, John, 184
Hay, John, 371
Haycraft, Samuel, 76, 131, 155, 402
Hazel, Caleb, 106
Head, Rev. Jesse, 75, 89, 109
Helm, Major Benjamin, 90
Henderson, Thomas J., 329, 330
Herndon, William H., 84-87, 130, 164,
173, 197, 213, 218, 219, 220, 221,
223, 229, 237, 238, 239, 269, 278, ab,
291, 297, 337, 338, 343, 355, 361
Herring, Bathsheba, 54, 55
1
61, 66-691
75,76
[414]
INDEX
Hill, Frederick Trevor, 313
Hitchcock, Caroline Hanks, So, 81, Ss
Hitt, Robert, 3S9
Hobart, Rev. Peter, 3, Jo-IS
Howell, Deborah, 38
Huguenots, 31
I
Iglehart, John E., ISO, ISI
IIJinois Anti-Slavery League, 226
Illinois Historical Library, 343, 404
Illinois State Historical Society, IS7
184, 251, 3S4
J
Johnston, Sarah Bush, uS
Jones, Abraham, 94
Jones, Richard Lloyd, 94
Judd, Norman B., 369, 373, 39S
K
Kentucky, call of, s3-6s
"Kentucky Preceptor, The," 139
Know-Nothing party, 401
L
Lamon, Ward, 86, 237, 297
Legal tender, bullets as, 7
Lemen, Rev. James, Sr., 147, 225
Lemen, Rev. James, Jr., us-227, 233
"Liberty Men," 271
Lincoln. Abraham: ancestry, 1-94;
different spellings of family name,
33; birthplace, 72, 90-100; mother
of, 78-92, 96-uX>; father of, 78-92,
94100, 107-163; childhood,
boyhood, 104, 121-131; education,
105108; religious influence of home,
109; early home influence regarding
slavery, no; removal to Indiana,
Ill-IZI; life in Indiana, I2IIS3;
death of mother, 123-127; his step-
mother, 128131; young manhood,
131-235; intellectual awakening,
139-153; and the church, 141-14S;
and "Life of Washington," 14S-I46;
and "Revised Statutes of Indiana,"
146, 147; and the Declaration of
Independence, 147; and Robert
Owen, 151-152; starting for himself,
154-184; life in Illinois, 155-278; '
death of father, 163; first political
speech, 164, 165; and Denton Offutt,
164-167; and New Salem (Ill.},
169-196; candidate for Illinois As-
sembly, 169; and the Clary Grove
boys, 174; ambition to enter public
life, 176; and the Black Hawk
War, I83-18S; defeat in Assembly
election, 187; Berry & Lincoln, 188-
190; and temperance, 191-193; as
a surveyor, 196-202; revival of
political ambition, 202; as a Whig
candidate for Assembly, 202; elec-
tion, 203 ; studies law, 204; as a
legislator, 206-210, 227; and Ann
Rutledge, 2n-223; his first big
year, 225; admitted to the bar,
225; letter on Reverend Lovejoy's
death, 233-234; first formal lecture,
234; marriage, 23 6; standing in
Springfield, 2S0-2SI; his legal work,
256-263; and George E. Rickett,
262, 263 ; ambition to enter Con-
gress, 263 ; as a politician, 264-292;
Hardin-Baker affair, 266-269; nom-
ination as Whig candidate for Con-
gress, 269; election, 272; River and
Harbor Convention, 273-278; first
term in Congress, 278-290; return to
the law, 292; death of son Edward,
296; the McReady case, 299-300;
legal code, 300-301 ; on the circuit,
305-320; Armstrong case, 317-320;
bolts his party, 321-342; "Anti-
Nebraska" speech, 328-338; educat-
ing Illinois, 341-353 ;nominated for
U. S. Senator, 345, 351; election of
1858, 367; a victorious defeat, 368;
feeling of country toward, 369-381;
first speech on capital and labor,
375; feeling toward Southern peo-
ple, 376; in the hands of his
friends, 382-410; Republican candi-
date for Presidency, 382-393; on
prohibition, 403-404; elected Presi-
dent, 410
"Lincoln and Douglas Debates," 354
INDEX
Lincoln & Herndon, 322, 343
Lincoln -Farm Association, 9 S
"Lincoln Louisville Loop," 1o6
Lincoln, Robert, 194, 251, 252, 253
"Lincoln the Lawyer," 313
Linder, U. F., 259
"Little Giant,"-See Douglas, Stephen
A.
Locke, D. R, 245, 363, 379, 38o, 382
Logan, Gen. John, 312
Logan, Stephen A., 28 I
Logan, Stephen T., 396
"Lost Speech."--See Speech, "Anti-
Nebraska"
Louis XIV, 31
Lovejoy, Rev. Elijah P., 233, 234
Lovejoy Memorial Association, 299
Lovejoy, Owen, 333, 3341 344
LoweU, James RusseJJ, 245
M
Massachusetts Colony, 3, 17
Massachusetts Historical Society, 10
Masters, Edgar Lee, 199, 222
Matthews, Stanley, 275
McCormick, Cyrus H., 315
Mcintyre, D. T., 259
McLean County Historical Society,
330, 331
McNeill, John, 214, 216, 217, 218
Medill, Joseph, 329, 331, 333, 337, 383,
385
Mexican War, 281-282, 283, 363
Milliken, James, 3 62
Missouri Compromise, 322, 332, 335,
340, 341, 346, 355. 361, 382
Monthly Meeting, Philadelphia, 78
Mo9res, Charles W., 231, 252, 256,
301, 313
Moravians, 44
Morgan, R. P., 314-315
Morrow, Governor, 275
"Mud sill" theory, 37S
N
Nail, J. L, 129
Nasby, Petroleum V.-See
David
Nebraska Bill, 323
New Jersey, call of, 30-43
Locke,
"New Harmony Gazette, The," 151
Newton, Joseph Fort, 3SS
Nicolay, John G., 371, 399
Norton, W. T., 299, 365, 394
Nott, Charles C., 378
Nutt, Samuel, 35
Nye, James W., 380
0
Offutt, Denton, 164-167, 175, !87, 291
Oglesby, Richard, 391
"Old Salem Lincoln League, The,"
170
Oregon, acquisition of, 284
Owen, Robert, 135, I51-152
Owen, William, 135
p
Palmer, John M., 333
Parker, Theodore, 355
Peck, Rev. J. M., 282
Peck, Robert, 5, 6
Peon, William, 37
"Personal Recollections of Abraham
Lincoln," 212
"Personal Recollections of J aoe Mar-
tin Johns," 307-309
Pickett, George E., 262
Pierce, Franklin, 332
Pigeon Church, 141I45, 147
Pitcher, John, 149
Plymouth Colony, '9
Polk, President, 273, 281, 282
Pond, Henry E., 26o, 261
Pond, Marvin B., 261
Pond, Samuel Sweezy, 26o, 261
Pope, John, 91
Puritan Plantation, 39
Puritans, s, 11, 18, 25, 26, 44, 69
Pusey, Dr. W. A., 131
Q
Quakers, 26, 31, 39, 44, 69
R
Ralston, Governor, 157
Rankin, Henry B., 212, 269-270, 343,
396
[4161
INDEX
"Real Lincoln, The,, 256, 26o
"Reminiscences of the Illinois Bar,"
256
Renshaw, James, 158, 159, 16o
Republican party, 342-41 1
Revolutionary War, 58
Reynolds, John, 206
Riney, Zachariah, 105, 106, 107
River and Harbor Convention, 273-
278
Robeson, Mary, 38
Rogers, Col. Matthew, 216
Rolling Fork Baptist Association, 109
"Rolling Fork Echo," 99, 106, 116
Rutledge, Ann, 211-223, 225
Rutledge, James, 172, 177, 214
s
Saltar, Hannah, 32, 34. 35, 38, 40
Saltar, John, 33
Saltar, Richard, 32, 33, 37
"Sand bar case," 387
Schneider, C7eorge, 329
Schuu, Carl, 395, 405, 410
Scott, John M., 393
Scott, Judge, 329
Selby, Paul, 326, 327, 333, 358, 359,
383
Seven-Day Baptists, 44
Seward, C7overnor, 287, 291, 292,
335
Seward, William H., 275, 380, 385,
391, 393, 394, 397, 408, 410
Shaw, B. F., 328
Shaw, James, 273
Shipley, Mary, 55
Short, James, 173, 175
Slavery, I09IIo, 146-147
1
167168,
225226, 231
1
258, 261, 284-41 I
Smith, Dr. James, 297
Smoot, Coleman, 173, 175, 261
"Soul of Abraham Lincoln," 298
Southwestern Indiana Historical So-
ciety, 150
Sparks, Edwin Erie, 3 54
Sparrow, Betsy, 123, 127
Sparrow, Thomas, 123, 127
Speech, "Anti-Nebraska," 328-338, 342
Speed, Joshua F., 230, 251, 253, 258
"Srring, Lincoln's," 63
"Squatter Sovereignty," 322, 327, 348,
351
Stanton, Edwin M., 315, 316, 317
Stephens, Alexander H., 274, 290, 439
Stoddard, William 0., 384, 385
Strickland, Percy, 162
"Strict Constructionists," 273
Stringer, Lawrence B., 312
Stuart & Lincoln, 255
Stuart, Major John T., 203, 230, 238,
262, 263
Sumner, Charles, 333, 335, 381
Sunday, continental, s
Swett, Leonard, 365, 385, 405
T
Taylor, C7reen, 134
Taylor, C7en. Zachary, 283, 285, 286,
290, 294, 295-296, 304
Tea Party, Boston, 49, 57
Texas, annexation of, 271, 272, 284
Thompson, Charles M., 157
Thompson, R. M., 77
Todd, Captain John, 61
Todd, Mary, 236-243, 249, 254, 258
Tracy, C7ilbert, 241, 265, 293, 304,
316
Transylvania Company, sS, 69
Trumbull, Lyman, 325, 333, 370, 373,
374, 388, 396
Turnham, David, 146, 147
u
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," 322
"Uncollected Letters of Abraham
Lincoln," 241
Underground Railroad, Illinois, 26o
v
Van Buren, President, 275
Varner, Louis, 142
"Virginia John," 44-52
w
Wallace, Rev. Peter, 202
Wallace, Mrs. Dr., 238
Ward, Mary, 70
[417]
INDEX
Warnick, Major, 159, 162
Warren, Governor, 275
Warren, Rev. Lewis A., 61, 1o6, 108
Watson, P. H., 315, 316
Wayland, Dr. J. W., 46-47
Webster, Daniel, 275, 279, 28o, 291,
292, 383
Weed, Thurlow, 275, 381, 405, 407
Weik, Jesse W., 87, 256, 26o, 262,
313
Wentworth, Long John 27 5
"We won't get out of the Union, and
you shan't," 409
White, Horace, 382
White House (of the '40's), 279
Whitney, Henry C., 1110, ss9, sso, 351,
332
Wickliffe, Colonel, 365
Willard, Frances E., 387
Wilmot, David, 284
Wilmot proviso, 284, 285
Winslow, Edward, 20
Winthrop, Governor, 12
Witchcraft, 25
Wright, Dr. J. J., ros
y
Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield,
234
[418]

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